European Court of Justice: Case Report

Abstract

Case C-379/98: PreussenElektra AG and Schleswag AG: Electricity - Renewable sources of energy - national legislation requiring electricity supply undertakings to purchase electricity at minimum prices and apporting the resulting costs between those undertakings and upstream network operators - State aid - Compatibility with the free movement of goods; Reference to the Court for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of Articles 30 (now 28), 92 (now 87) and 93(3) (now 88(3)) of the EC Treaty; Judgment of 13 March 2001 (not yet reported) Previously published in: European Environmental Law Review, jg. 2001, vol. 10, number 6, Kluwer Academic Publishers, with kind permission of Kluwer Law International This ruling touches upon the tense relationship between the Community's internal market rules and national environmental policy. In this relationship a particularly important role must be awarded to the principle of integration as laid down in Article 6 EC. This case, where the Court for the first time explicitly refers to Article 6 EC, may therefore have important ramifications for the way in which conflicts between national environmental law and the prohibitive provisions of the EC Treaty will be dealt with by the Court in the future.