PP3003 Research Question Paper - Essay Example

Milward suggests that the founding fathers of the EU actually intended their states to maintain sovereignty in the system and that only by binding the economies of the states to some extent together could their independence in a rapidly changing world be maintained. As Milward wrote in his The European Rescue of the Nation-State, "The reinvigorated nation-state had to choose the surrender of a degree of national sovereignty to sustain its reassertion . . .” (Milward 1992) The post-war system was such that European states would have had a harder time existing if they did not rely on one another.

Without the EU they would not have as much independence as they have today. This is an interesting argument but is not a convincing one. It is one that makes more sense in the 1990s than it does in the aftermath of the recent expansion and economic crisis. The truth is that by overreaching, the EU has come to damage the independence of the nation state. Countries such as Greece and Ireland have given up a great deal of sovereignty in recent months (Brown 2011). The EU bureaucracy and power have grown dramatically and eclipsed weaker countries.

The EU has become, in some senses, a monster that has a life of its own. Nation states are vanishing within its bailout mechanism and refusal to allow individual devaluation. Milward's argument may have made more sense when he first made it but time has not been kind to it. Bomberg, E. (2003): The European Union: How Does It Work? (The New European Union Series). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, JM (Jan. 2011): "How the Celtic Tiger Lost its Roar", Prospect. Milward, A (1992): The European Rescue of the Nation-State.

New York: Routeledge. 2) What impact did the ECJ’s rulings in the Van Gend en Loos and Costa cases have on the development of the EU legal order? The rulings led to the establishment of the fact that the treaty creating the EC also created a new legal order, effectively creating a supra-national body of law. The Van Gend en Loos case related to tariffs between companies (Barnard 2007). One country wanted to raise a tariff on a chemical but this was found to breach EC law, as the purpose of the treaty was to reduce tariffs between countries.

For the first time, it was determined that countries were required to obey rules higher than those created in their own legislatures. The countries of the EC were binding themselves together with new laws that in many senses encroached upon their independence and sovereignty. This case created the doctrine of direct effect, which was perhaps not foreseeable some of the new signatories to the EC treaty, whereby provisions in the treaty could have direct legal effect and overpower their own domestic law.

Costa is a case that confirmed this idea. EC/EU law is paramount where a conflict occurs between the two laws. This has since been somewhat weakened by many national courts which suggest that this type of paramountcy only really occurs when the EU law is in sync with the national constitution of the affected country. Not every EU law will therefore be paramount over every national law. There is some room to manoeuvre (Kent 2001). We can see from this important rulings by the ECJ the beginning of the legal order of the EU superstate.

There were many unforeseen consequences to the signing of the first treaty and the beginning of ever closer union. Many legal