The Court of Justice Approach to Free Trade

The Court of Justice Approach to Free Trade
Name:
Institution:
Course:
Date:
The European Union's Court of Justice has sought to balance between free trade within the European Union and the need to respect the autonomy of the member states. The Court of Justice has used articles 30 TFEU and article 110 TFEU in order to achieve this end (Akkermans, 2013). This paper seeks to explore how the Court of Justice has employed the two articles in its attempt to promote free trade in the Union while at the same time respect the independence of the target countries and protect the local businesses within them. Indeed the Court of justice has been able to address concerns about the issues arising from trade by applying the two articles. Several disputes have already been decided upon by the court with some cases still ongoing (Larobina & Pate, 2011). In the paper, the two articles will be discussed individually while applying some of the cases already decided in order to put the courts application of the two articles into context.
Frederic Bastiat, a French philosopher, statesman and economist observed that when goods do not cross borders, the soldiers would (Haukeland, 2012). Using the philosophy put forth by Frederic, it is vital to understand the importance that the EU places on the free trade of goods and services across its member countries. The free movement of goods in the EU is affected by the several barriers, which are addressed under the EU laws (Messerlin, 2011). Messerlin observes that some of the barriers are fiscal barriers, which concerns itself with the imposition of custom duties and adoption of discriminatory internal taxation regimes. He continues on to state that the fiscal barriers work by imposing levies, taxes and other charges, which makes imports into such a country more expensive while placing local products at an advantage. Other barriers are non-fiscal which are quantitative restrictions and measures that do not take the f...