Page 210 - Секретаријат за законодавство

II. BASIC PRINCIPLES
The scope of the basic principles of the EU law was established either
by the case law of the European Court of Justice of the European Union
(ECJ) or by the Founding Treaties. Basic principles are an important part
of EU legal order, and their practical function is to allow the resolution of
disputes for which there is no speciÞc written legal rules. While there is
no exhaustive list of such principles in the case law of the ECJ or in the
Founding Treaties, the following principles are widely known and applied.
Basic principles of the European Union law are as follows:

1. AUTONOMY / INDEPENDENCE

EU Acquis is an autonomous legal system, independent from the Mem-
ber States’ legal systems even from their constitutional principles.

The law of European Union, deriving from the Founding Treaties, is an
independent legal source and as such it may not be amended by the acts of
the Member States’ legal systems since this can impair the legal bases of
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the European Union (See case Internationale Handelsgesellschaft (IHG ).
2. SUPREMACY

Supremacy of the EU law means precedence of the EU law over the
Member States’ national laws. By concluding Founding Treaties, the
Member States agreed, for particular issues and areas, to mutually cre-
ate the decision and regulation policy in those areas. As a result of
their agreement to regulate the issues of mutual interest on supra-na-
tional level they established supra-national legal system, which in ac-
cordance with the basic rules for EU functioning has supremacy in the
application in cases where there are national norms thereto.

The principle of supremacy has been established by the European Court
of Justice. This principle is aimed at securing effective and uniform ap-
plication of the EU law, while in practice it means the following:

2
Ruling of the European Court of Justice Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH
v. Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel (Case 11/70) [1970] ECR
1125, [1972] CMLR 255.

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