2008, Volume 14, N°2 - Centre d'études et de recherches ...

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Morten RASMUSSEN
who wanted to promote the development of a Federal and Constitutional Court and
furnish the Treaties with distinct constitutional features. These actors worked under
serious political constraints and the progress they made during the above
mentioned negotiations often seemed very small indeed. However, in the end they
provided sufficient legal basis for the ECJ to revolutionise European law. The early
history of the European legal order is thus one of federalist political and legal
forces promoting, through different actors at different points in time, a particular
constitutional thinking about the Treaties and the ECJ.
At the same time the legal revolution is clearly accidental. Without the bizarre
nomination of Lecourt as judge of the ECJ, the balance inside the Court would have
been different during the Van Gend en Loos and the judgment would most likely
have refused to grant direct effect to article 12. Considering the importance of
European law and the ECJ today, the nomination of Lecourt is arguably de Gaulle’s
most lasting contribution to European integration and one that went in completely
the opposite direction to most of his European policies.