9. European Union Law and Institutions


  • The European Union is a supranational legal order based on treaties and general legal principles.
  • The institutions of the EU exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers.
  • The sources of EU Law are Treaties, Regulations, Directives, Decisions, and Judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
  • Decisions of the ECJ assert that human rights form part of the general principles of EU law and Article 6 Treaty on European Union (TEU) has the effect of giving formal recognition that human rights, especially those protected by the ECHR, are part of EU law and are protected by the ECJ.
  • Regulations are ‘directly applicable’ in all member states, while a Decision is binding upon those to whom it is addressed and a Directive is binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each member state to whom it is addressed but leaves to the national authorities the choice of form and methods.
  • The transfer by the states from their domestic legal systems to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail while they remain members of the EU.
  • Substantive Community rights prevail over the express terms of any domestic law, including primary legislation, made or passed after the coming into force of the 1972 Act, even in the face of plain inconsistency between the two.

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