EUROPEAN UNION LAW

European Union Law

European Union Law

Problem Statement

In February 2011, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament introduced Directive 2011/43/EU (fictitious) requiring a limit be placed on the noise emitted by street sweeper machines used in Member States by September 2012. The motivation behind this move was that of environmental health, as it would be to the general benefit of the public if noise levels were reduced. However, the UK Department of the Environment is confident that current administrative practices and policies will cover the requirements of the Directive, and therefore the Government does not put forward a specific Act of Parliament dealing with this issue. Recently, George has been disturbed by the noise of the local council's street sweeper machine, and Mildred has been bothered by a sweeper owned by Sweep-U-Like, a local firm who sweep the private road on which she lives. Both have suffered migraines and taken time off work. Advise George and Mildred as to their possible rights and remedies under EU law, as they are trying to enforce Directive 2011/43/EU in cases in the UK courts.

Introduction

On January 1973, United Kingdom officially joined the European Union, (previously called the European Community), after signing the Treaty of Rome in 1972 (Schutze, 2012, p 92-98). The European Union has been in force since 1957 when six countries or 'Member States' namely, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg signed the Treaty of Rome (Schutze, 2012, p 92-98). Thus, EU rules, regulations, directives etc were incorporated into UK legislation to bring all Member States on par with each other, thereby implying EU laws to be supreme over those of the Member States. Conversely, UK did not want to give up the sovereignty and supremacy of its parliament, known as parliamentary sovereignty, they passed the European Communities Act 1972, which enabled EU legislation to be merged with UK laws while respecting its supremacy (Schutze, 2012, p 92-98).

The European Community Act 1972

The European Community Act 1972 outlined the European community supremacy vs. parliamentary sovereignty. However membership of the UK remains incompatible according to the traditional parliamentary view. other member states have limited legislatures whereas UK has an unwritten constitution meaning their legislation is supreme. one side of the argument defines that the ECA 1972 is an act of the parliament itself and is therefore supreme, not community law as it's an act of the Westminster parliament (Parpworth et al, 2006, p 202-206). Though, the third aspect of Dicey's laws of parliamentary sovereignty that no person or authority has the right to set the legislation for UK. Therefore all rights under the EC treaty were given effect in preference to pre existing UK law under section 2(1) of the ECA 1972 (Parpworth et al, 2006, p 202-206).

It has the quality which enables a provision of its community law to become a part of the national law of its Member State, without the necessity of legislation (Parpworth et al, 2006, p 202-206). It is incorporated directly into the corpus of national ...