Summary of European Law 25/26 Leiden University

Europees recht/European Union Law
Topic: Free Movement of Goods & Internal Market
What is the internal market?
 The Internal Market covers Goods, Persons, Services and Capital.
 Supremacy: EU law trumps MS law
 National rule in place is to be disapplied
 What is do be applied instead?
1. EU law doesn’t specify (negative integration)
2. EU law specifies it (positive integration)
 Negative effects of the EU internal market:
o Goods: Race to the bottom of standards that are necessary to keep
societies together and to progress
o Servies: Private actors playing national state authorities off against
each other
o Persons: Harmful competition between states due to diverging
national currencies
 Solutions:
o Goods: Common rules – Harmonisation
o Services: Central market supervision – EU Competition Law
o Persons: Currency Union with a Central Bank: Euro

Free Movement of Goods: Inbound Dimension
 Material scope:
 The product at stake must be a good
o ‘Products which can be valued in money and which are
capable, as such, of forming the subject of commercial
transactions’ (CJEU, Case 7/68, Commission/Italy (Art
Treasures), para.1)
o Special case: Electricity (CJEU: also a good)
 Personal scope
 Free movement of goods protects goods: these goods must be in
free circulation in Member States (= once imported into one
Member State also a good of third country origin benefits from the
free movement of goods)
 Free movement of goods does not protect persons
o Article 34 TFEU is silent with regard to its personal scope

, o Third-country nationals can rely on Article 34 TFEU provided
that the good that they are ‘representing’ is in free circulation
in Member States
 Step-by-step plan:
Goods:
 Tariff restrictions or Non-tariff restrictions
 Tariff restrictions: Regulation of market access or Domestic
market regulation
 Regulation of market access: Customs/charges having
equivalent effect - Article 28,30 TFEU
 Domestic market regulation: Tax discrimination/protectionism –
Article 110 TFEU
 Non-Tariff restrictions: Regulation of market access or Domestic
market regulation. Both: Quantitative restrictions on
imports/measures having equivalent effect – Article 34 et seqq.
TFEU
 What is a quantitative restriction in imports?
 CJEU, Case 2/73, Geddo:
 ‘Measures which amount to a total or partial restraint of,
according to the circumstances, imports, exports, or goods
coming into a state or leaving the state’.
 What is a measure having an equivalent effect as quantitative
restrictions on import?
 CJEU, Case 8/74 Dassonville [1974] ECR 837:
 ‘’All trading rules enacted by Member States which are capable
of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, intra-
Community trade are to be considers as measures having an
effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions.’’
 Consequence: Basically all state measures that may have an
impact on trade are covered by EU law
 Purpose of the free movement of goods is to guarantee market
access

 How to deal with the effects of domestic regulation on market
access?
 ‘’Double burden’’: Indistinctively applicable measures form a
barrier to market access if the imported products are penalised
by being forced to undergo costly adjustments (CJEU, Case
120/78, ‘Cassis de Dijon’).