Remedies Before National Courts
This chapter is concerned with the decentralized enforcement of European Union law, that is, the way in which national courts uphold the rights it confers on litigants. When the Court of Justice established in Van Gend en Loos that Union law was capable of conferring on litigants rights which the national courts were bound to protect, it had written only the first sentence (albeit a very striking one) of a long and complex story that remains unfinished. For while the Court in Van Gend en Loos had enlisted the help of the national courts in ensuring that Union law was observed, it had not made clear how exactly it expected them to discharge that responsibility. The Union legislature might have attempted to resolve the issue systematically and today there is a significant body of Union legislation dealing with the remedies national courts must provide in discrete areas. However, such legislation was slow to develop and remains piecemeal in nature. This has meant that much of the responsibility for fleshing out the remedial obligations of national courts when seeking to uphold rights granted by Union law has fallen to the Court of Justice.