The Gazette 1983

GAZETTE

APRIL 1983

BOOK REVIEWS | j | | j} PLENDER, RICHARD: "A Practical Introduction to European Community Law". Sweet & Maxwell, 1980. This paperback (166 pages) is "designed to present the practitioner with the basic information that he requires in order to recognise a point of European Community law when he sees it, and to show how that law can be used with effect". The author, by providing a readable text together with an extensive bibliography and authoratative footnotes at the end of each chapter, has competently and intelligently achieved his objective notwithstanding his modestly prefaced reservation that it "is not, of course, to be used as a work of reference . . . Nor is it to be used as a students' text book". Avoiding lengthy explanation of the Institutions of the EEC, Dr. Plender methodically explains, canvasses and criticises both established and innovative uses of Community law on a carefully organised chapter basis to which I will now turn. His first Chapter "Basic Principles" describes coherently the direct effect and supremacy of Community law, its sources and the developing common law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as a new legal system creating rights and duties for supranational institutions, Member States, corporations and individuals. His discussion in Chapter 2 "The Jurisdiction of National Courts and of The European Court", the remedies available and the 'locus standi' rules is fundamental information for every practitioner. It should be noted (at p. 17-19) however that the guidelines provided by Lord Denning in Buhner v. Bollinger ([1974], 2 All ER 1226 (at 1234-1236)) as to when an Article 177 reference should be made to the ECJ which he discusses have been rejected by Barrington, J. in the Irish High Court ( I C M S A v. Government of Ireland, unreported 1979 No. 5672P, 25.10.79 at p.5). He criticises the ECJ's original jurisdiction in Community staff cases (amounting to nearly 30% of all cases which have been brought before it) as an "intolerable strain on the court's time and resources" (p. 30) and recommends the establishment of a Staff Tribunal. His presentation of the procedure to be followed when bringing a case before the ECJ (which may award legal aid in the form of a cash grant to any litigant) in Chapter 3 combines accuracy with simplicity. In Chapter 4 he introduces the reader to a rich area of potential private action, namely the free movement of goods provisions, customs duties and their valuation, and the prohibition of measures having overt or covert equivalent restrictive effects. In this regard as an example he points to certain legislation which "remains open to challenge" (p. 4 9) and questions inter alia whether "the rate of duty on wines, in a country such as the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, be such as to afford indirect protection to the brewing industry?" (p. 50). Again in his Chapter 5, on the free movement of labour, stressing that "about 2 5 0 , 0 00 natives of Ireland live in the Greater London area alone" (p. 59) and with a view to canvassing uses, he catalogues (at p. 65) the several rights and welfare benefits enjoyed by workers, and raises some probing questions in relation to their possible future application (p.66). The eight forms of social security for workers provided by Community legislation which "cover

a life blighted with misfortune from the cradle to the grave" (p.70) provide in his analysis a bridge between the employed and the self-employed. The self-employed, corporations, co-operatives, partnerships and firms are the subject matter of his sixth Chapter dealing with the freedom of establishment. His otherwise summary treatment of the Community Direc- tives on Company Law raises the doubt as to whether the language of the English Act implementing the First Directive "is apt" (p.83). He explains the conditions under which architects, doctors and nurses may freely practise their profession in any of the Member States, and in relation to the legal profession, he demonstrates that as there is no Community provision regulating the rights of a lawyer in one part of a State to practise in another part of that State" . . . an Irish barrister may be permitted to perform in England functions that an English barrister could not properly discharge" (p.91). In Chapters 7 and 8 he correctly and concisely treats the anti-trust laws on restrictive agreements and practices ( EEC Art. 85) and on monopolies and dominant positions ( EEC Art. 86) separately. In the former, he considers which concerted arrangements are prohibited and void for their (potential) anticompetitive effects and which are excepted and criticises the legal uncertainty in this distinction. In the latter, he states how the Treaty's prohibition on an abuse of a dominant position is based upon "a traditional economic or moral objection'to monopolies and dominant positions, which lies in the inefficiency with which they are likely to produce, granted the breadth of discretion that they afford to their occupants to make commercial decisions free of competitive restraints" (p. 110). His short Chapter 9 on Trade and Agricultural Products reopens discussion on the availability of remedies for private litigants which in a second edition would be more appropriately found in Chapter 2. Finally, from his introductory-type comments on the Community regulation of agribusiness, he concludes with a critical analysis of the European Convention on the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters which has subsequently been implemented in England although not yet in Ireland. N o good book is free of printing errors: thus one should read "and" for "or" on the third line of the second paragraph of p. 142; and surely one should not dishonour the Commission with a perfunctory "commission" (third line from end of p. 123)? This book with its practical bias and short concise text provides a comprehensive overview of Community law which for the past ten years has been part of the Law of Ireland and is recommended to all Irish Solicitors. Duncan S. J. Grehan The Northern Ireland Act, 1982 by Paul R. McGuire Current Law Statute Reprints, Sweet & Maxwell STG£ 4 . 50 pp 1]7. Subscribers to Sweet and Maxwell's Current Law Statutes obtain copies of new legislation as it is enacted, together with annotations placing the legislation in perspective and offering clear and concise interpretations. This publication is of specific interest to those with an interest in Northern Irish politics. The booklet reproduces 69