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GAZETTE
APRIL 1983
BOOK REVIEWS
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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
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