Identifying the legal effects of regulations, we should consider that the regulation takes advantage of its nature to fulfill its legal effects on the process of implementing upon the Member States. It has a binding force to all Member States as the international norm made by the EC, and it is independent on any national laws. The Member States have to implement it completely and correctly once it comes into force, even sometimes they have to modify their own laws to comply with the regulation. The binding force effect shown in the case Commission v United Kingdom(1979) apparently, where the regulation requiring mechanical recoding equipment to be installed in lorries was issued. The United Kingdom government of the day decided not to implement the regulation, but to leave it to lorry owners to decide whether or not to put in such equipment. When the matter was referred to the European Court of Justice it was held that Member States had no discretion in the case of regulations. The wording of Article 249 was explicit and meant that regulations were automatically law in all Member States. States could not pick and choose which ones they would implement. In this way regulations make sure that laws are uniform across all the Member States.( Martin 2002, p.78 ) Also, the regulation has the direct effect on the Member States, where the individual can rely on the regulation which is related to their rights to be against the state or the other individual when they suffered the serious damages if the states failed to carry out the regulation.
Directives are issued for the harmonization of laws within the Member States when the national laws need to be modified or national provision must be enacted. Directives have already covered many social fields, such as, company laws, banking, insurance, health and safety of workers, equal rights, consumer laws and social security.(Martin 2002, p.79) Directives do not have the general application since they only give effect to the Member states or individual which have been addressed by directives, also, directives must be notified to their addressees. The Member States need to use their national legal measures to implement the directives, which is another difference from regulations. The directives leave the choices for their addressees to perform them into national laws within the time limit which is usual from one to three years. In practice, many directives but not all were published in the Official Journal as regulations, they entered into force at the date specified or if there is no specified date they should come into force 20 days after publication, since only those which applied to all the Member States and passed pursuant to the co-decision procedure procedure have to be published on the Official Journal.( Craig and Burca 2003, p.114-115 )
Directives are binding upon addressee or addressees, but are free for them to use their methods to carry out them effectively. Although every state has different legislative system, the directive can be implemented to be suitable for the circumstances of the nation as its valuable flexibility, so directives can be considered as the main way to harmonize with laws within nations. For example, in contract law, the provisions in the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations1994( SI 1994/3159), repealed and replaced by the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999(SI 1999/2083), which is the case illustrating that UK law is becoming consistent with the EC directives.( Kelly, Holmes and Hayward 2002, p.18) In practice, since the directive only has the vertical direct effect rather than the regulation, the individual can rely on the directive to get a compensation from the state if there is a mis-implementation of the directive or a failure to implement, for instance, the case Francovich v Italy( 1991), which gives a good view of the vertical effect, while the directive does not have a horizontal effect ,which can be proved in the case Duke v GEC Reliance Ltd(1988) that illustrates the individual can not rely on the directive to seek damages against another individual.
Finally, decisions are the rather different measures from regulations and directives, because they have an administrative nature, implementing other Community rules, as in the case 226/87 Commission v. Greece ( Mathijsen 1999, p. 30,), and they can be addressed either to a Member State or a named individual( person or company), for example, decisions taken by the Commission under Regulation 17 in application of Article 81 and 82 EC( the competition rules).
Obviously, the decision is recognized as a binding act on the addressees, and also has the direct effect to make sure that the Community rules are performed within the nations which is addressed by the decision appropriately and effectively.
Above three measures are ‘hard’ laws since they all have the binding power, and there is no hierarchy among them, so we can not say the regulation is more powerful than the directive and the decision because they should be equally treated to develop the Community policy in a particular area.
REFERENCES:
GRAIG, P. and BURCA, G., 2003. EU law, text, cases, and materials. 3rd ed. Oxford university press.
KELLY, D., HOLMES, A. and HAYWARD, R., 2002. Business Law. 4th ed. Cavendish publishing.
MATHIJSEN, P.S.R.F., 1999. A guide to European Union Law. 7th ed. London: Sweet & Maxwell.
MARTIN, J., 2002. The English legal system. 3rd ed. Hodder&Stoughton
SHAW, J.,2000. Law of the European Union. 3rd ed. Palgrave.
