ABSTRACT
In 1963, in Case 26/62 Van Gend en Loos (see Chapter 4), it will be recalled that the Court of Justice stated that the Community constituted a ‘new legal order’. The Dutch and other governments’ arguments that the ‘standstill’ on customs duties in Article 12 (now 25) was a Treaty obligation, any violation of which could be invoked only at international level (that is, by an action brought either by the Commission or another Member State-a dualist position in international law terms), was rejected by the Court on policy grounds and in monist terms:
The objective of the EEC Treaty, which is to establish a Common Market, the functioning of which is of direct concern to interested parties in the Community, implies that this Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the Contracting States.
