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The Court of Justice and its Role as a driving Force in European Integration 111
The Beginnings of the Court of Justice and its Role
as a driving Force in European Integration
Christian Pennera (*)
To date, the Court of Justice of the European Communities has delivered nearly
four thousand judgments. The entire collection of the Court's case-law occupies a
shelf space of nearly six linear metres in the specialist libraries 1 .
As an administrative jurisdiction and then a constitutional one for the Communities
but also the supreme instance for all the national courts in their implementation
of Community law, the Court of Justice has shown itself to be, over the years,
a powerful driving force for European integration. The informed observer will see
this discreet seat of jurisdiction as in fact the most powerful of the Community
institutions whose firm determination to ensure that the treaties are implemented,
whether this calls forth praise or opprobrium, has done most to make the Community
into a day-to-day reality.
Writings, articles or commentaries on the Court of Justice and its case-law, its
practice and procedure are legion. This is as good as saying that a jurist who has
been steeped in Community law will not learn a great deal from perusing this
article. Here and there, however, a few details about how the Court came into being
may perhaps catch the eye of such people.
These lines are intended for historians, who are often put off by legal vocabulary
and techniques. For their benefit the author, who is a practitioner of the law in
a Community institution but who also has a grounding in scientific historical research,
will try to explain how decisive the Court's role was in the early stages of the
Community's history. It has been assumed, therefore, that the general historical
context may be taken as read 2 . No reference will be made to specialist publications
unless they directly touch upon matters affecting the Court's history.
Grosso modo, this article covers the period up to the mid-sixties. Among the
two hundred-odd decisions up to 1965 only those will be mentioned which, from
the author's personal point of view but also in the opinion of most commentators,
are of key interest.
(*) The opinions expressed by the author, who is an official of the European Parliament and a former
official of the Court of Justice, are strictly personal.
1. Reports of Cases before the Court, Volume 1954 to 1956 and following volumes, published in each
of the official languages. In certain languages there is a selective translation only for the period
preceding the accessions.
2. See, in particular, P. GERBET, La construction de l'Europe, Paris 1983, 500 pp; D. SPIEREN-
BURG and R. POIDEVIN: Histoire de la Haute Autorité de la CECA, Brussels 1993, 920 pp.;
Contributions to the Symposia of the European Community Liaison Committee of Historians:
1984 (Origins of the European Integration), 1986 (The Beginnings of the Schuman-Plan), 1987
(The Relaunching of Europe and the Treaties of Rome).