''Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel'' (1970) Case 11/70 is an

EU law European Union law is a system of Supranational union, supranational Law, laws operating within the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). It has grown over time since the 1952 founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, to promote ...

case and

German constitutional law The law of Germany (), that being the modern German legal system (), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, though many of the most important laws, for example ...

case concerning the conflict of law between a national legal system and the laws of the European Union.

Facts

The

Common Agricultural Policy The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Commission. It implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programmes. It was introduced in 1962 and has since then undergone several changes to reduce ...

permitted exports only by exporters who obtained an export licence, on a deposit of money, that could be forfeited if they failed to make the export during the licence’s validity period. The Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH claimed that the licensing system was a disproportionate violation of their right to conduct a business under the German constitution (''

Grundgesetz The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany () is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The West German Constitution was approved in Bonn on 8 May 1949 and came into effect on 23 May after having been approved by the oc ...

''), because it did more than was necessary to achieve the public objective at hand. The German Administrative Court (''Verwaltungsgericht'') made a reference to the ECJ.

Judgment

European Court of Justice

The ECJ held that the validity of EU measures cannot be challenged on grounds of national law rules or concepts, even if that is a violation of fundamental human rights provisions in a member state’s constitution. European Community law did, however, respect fundamental rights, as in member state systems. But here there was no fundamental right violation. The case then returned to the German Administrative Court (''Verwaltungsgericht''). Given the conflict it potentially faced, it then requested a ruling from the German Constitutional Court.

German Constitutional Court

The German Constitutional Court ('' Bundesverfassungsgericht'') held that so long as fundamental rights protection was evident, it would not scrutinise EU action in detail.

Significance

The case is important because it addresses what appears to be one of the most difficult challenges facing the acceptance of the supremacy of European law within the German legal order, that is, the possibility of conflict between a European law obligation and a fundamental right protected by the German Constitution. As Weiler has argued, it was virtually impossible that the national courts would accept European law supremacy without a guarantee of human rights protection. In this light, the significance of ''Internationale Handelsgesellschaft'' was that the European Court of Justice itself took on a role protecting the fundamental rights of individuals in the European legal order, allowing the German Constitutional Court to adopt an accommodating approach to the continuing development of the supremacy of European law within the German legal order. This approach to the case may perhaps overemphasise the sensitivity and difficulty of the problem however. The judgments of the German Constitutional Court on possible conflicts between treaty obligations and German constitutional rights throughout the postwar era demonstrate that the Court has been extremely cautious about finding that Germany’s treaty obligations violate the fundamental rights protected by the German Constitution, and indeed that the German Constitutional Court has consistently tended to accommodate the constitutionality of such treaty obligations since the 1950s. Subsequently, in '' Re Wünsche Handelsgesellschaft'' in a case where an EC import licensing system was challenged in the German Court, but held valid by the ECJ, the BVerfGE revised its approach. It held that because, since 1974, the ECJ had developed protection for fundamental rights, declarations on rights and democracy had been made by the Community institutions, and all EC Member States had acceded to the

European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is a Supranational law, supranational convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Draf ...

, it would no longer scrutinise EU law in every case. It said, This is popularly known as the '' Solange II'' judgment.See J Frowein, ‘Solange II’ (1988) 25 CMLR 201

Notes