Jurnalul de studii juridice supliment 4-2012 - Editura Lumen

JURNALUL DE STUDII JURIDICEcommunity law creates rights for private individuals, natural and legalpersons, which they can invoke in national courts. 14As jurisprudence has shown, the European Union represents anew legal order for whose benefit member states have limited theirsovereign rights and whose subjects are not the states alone, but theirnationals as well. Thus, community law not only imposes obligations onpeople, independent of member state legislation, but is also destined toensure them rights which will become part of their legal heritage. It isconsidered that these rights derive not only from treaties, but also invirtue of obligations clearly imposed upon member states and EuropeanUnion institutions. 15 In this way, persons can always invoke the provisionsof community law before a national court against the state authorities byvirtue of a vertical direct effect, to the extent that the respective state hasnot already put them into place, while the aforementioned provisions areprecise and unconditioned enough and national action is unnecessary totake these provisions into consideration. 16 With regards to relationsbetween persons, the directives may have a vertical direct effect. 17This is how they restrict national law, thanks to these twoprinciples and the priority of community law and the direct effect, beyondthe uncontested benefits they entail. The national law is subjected andyields to community law. The national parliament is therefore “stripped”of its role of legislator, and becomes a mere “translator”.This conditioning of the law by community law represents one ofthe causes of the decrease in importance of national law and its crisis, allthe more that national parliaments play a minor role in developing thenational legislature.The European Union has tried to limit the dangers of thecorrosive effect its law has on national legislature, by sanctioning theprinciples of subsidiarity and proportionality in the treaty of Lisbon, butalso by trying to increase the role of national parliaments.Thus, article 5 of the Protocol on the Application of the Principlesof Subsidiarity and Proportionality reaffirms the obligation to encouragebills to be in accordance with them, with each such document having toinclude a detailed sheet which permits the evaluation of its conformity14 J.C. Cautron. Droit europeen, 6' edition, Ed. Dalloz, Paris, 1994, p. 141; T. Stefan, B.Andresan Grigoriu. Drept comunitar, Editura C.H. Beck, Bucuresti, 2007, p. 204.15 O. Manolache. Drept comunitar, Editura All Beck, Bucuresti, 2003, p. 57.16 Ibidem.17 T. Stefan, B. Andresan Grigoriu. Drept comunitar, Editura C.H. Beck, Bucuresti, 2007, p.221.44Copyright Jurnalul de Studii Juridice, Editura Lumen