While constitutional law concerns the governance structure of the European Union, administrative law obliges the EU institutions and Member States to respect the law. Both Member States and the Commission have a general legal right or locus standi to bring infringement actions against the EU institutions and other Member States. Since the founding of the EU, the Court has also ruled that the Treaties allow citizens or businesses to bring actions against EU and national institutions for breaches of treaties and regulations, if they are correctly interpreted as rights and obligations. However, under the guidelines, it was stated in 1986 that citizens or businesses could not make claims against other non-state parties. [115] This meant that member states` courts were not required to apply EU law where a national rule was in conflict, even though the member state government could be sued if it imposed an obligation on another citizen or entity. Those `direct effect` rules limit the extent to which Member States` courts are required to apply EU law. All acts of the EU institutions are subject to judicial review and proportionality, in particular where general principles of law or fundamental rights are affected. The remedy for a plaintiff for breaking the law is often financial damages, but courts may also require specific enforcement or issue an injunction to ensure the law is as effective as possible. The 1985 Product Liability Directive was the first consumer protection measure. It creates strict corporate liability for all manufacturers and retailers for harm caused to consumers by products to promote basic health and safety standards. [300] Any manufacturer or supplier, if the final producer is insolvent, of a product is in principle obliged to compensate the consumer for any damage caused by a defective product.
[301] A “defect” is anything that is less than what a consumer can legitimately expect, which essentially means that products should be safe for use. There is a narrow defence when a manufacturer can prove that a defect could not be detected by any scientific method, which has never been successfully claimed, as it is generally accepted that a for-profit company should not be able to outsource the risks of its activities. EU law sets basic standards for “exit” (when markets work), rights (enforceable in court) and “participation” (especially through voting) in the company. [295] Competition rules generally reconcile the interests of different groups in favour of consumers, with the broader aim of Article 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union, namely a “highly competitive social market economy”. [296] Article 345 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union obliges the EU “not to affect in any way the rules governing the system of property ownership in the Member States.” [287] This means that the EU must be neutral vis-à-vis member states` decisions to own or privatize state-owned enterprises. Although there have been academic proposals for a European civil code and plans to formulate non-binding principles for contracts and tort, harmonisation has only taken place for conflict-of-law rules and intellectual property. The final stage of the complete free movement of capital required a single currency and monetary policy that eliminated transaction costs and exchange rate fluctuations. Following a report by the Delors Commission in 1988[288], economic and monetary union was declared an objective, firstly by the completion of the internal market, secondly by the creation of a European System of Central Banks for the coordination of the common monetary policy and, thirdly, by fixing exchange rates and introducing a single currency. the euro. Today, 19 Member States have adopted the euro, while 9 Member States have chosen not to do so or whose accession has been delayed, especially since the crisis in the euro area. In accordance with Articles 119 and 127 TFEU, the objective of the European Central Bank and other central banks should be price stability.
This has been criticised because it clearly exceeds the objective of full employment in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union. [289] In addition to the European Economic Community itself, the European continent has undergone a profound transition to democracy. The dictators of Greece and Portugal were deposed in 1974, and the Spanish dictator died in 1975, allowing them to join in 1981 and 1986. In 1979, the European Parliament held its first direct elections, reflecting a growing consensus that the EEC should be a union of peoples rather than a union of Member States. The Single European Act of 1986 increased the number of Treaty issues for which qualified majority voting (rather than consensus) was to be used for legislation to speed up trade integration. The 1985 Schengen Agreement (which was not originally signed by Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark or Greece) allowed the movement of people without border controls. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, in 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev announced a policy of “transparency” and “restructuring” (glasnost and perestroika).