FORTY YEARS AFTER Van Gend en Loos and Costa v ENEL, it has become a truism to say that ‘every national court in the European Community is now a Community law court’.1 ‘Juges communautaires de droit commun, (), ils sont les juges des litiges qui naissent de l’insertion de droit communautaire dans les ordres juridiques nationaux’.2 To put it in the words of the Court of First Instance, ‘when applying [Community law], the national courts are acting as Community courts of general jurisdiction’.3 The national courts are first in line to enforce and apply Community law within the Member States
