The System
The European Union is a system through which soverign countries continually review and agree upon, and by doing so regulate, areas of law, thus superimposing these regulations above their own laws and in effect creating a superstate able and necessary to cope with the future demands of global commerce and progress.
The system can be seen as a work of art since it solves the problem of creating a unified “even closer” comunity without a conquer and divde strategy and at the same time being beneficial to the member states. Understood as a win-win situation the system can be seen as being copied in essence to different degrees of depth in regional trade blocks such as APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Group), NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), Comesa (South and East Africa), Mercosur (Latin America), Caricom (Caribean).
Since the European Union Model has been around for quite some time, its regulation depth has progressed very far to an extend that makes the EU an institution of ever growing relevance in the daily lives of member state citizens as well as the world.

In essece a body of treaties, law and court judgements the history that can lead to unifying 20+ currencies is surely interesting, but not as relevant for our clients as the rights and impact of the regulations on inner european trade and business.

1. Free movement of goods, Art. 28 EU
Any commercial enterprise producing products legal in one member state has the right to move and sell his goods in any other member state without quantitative restrictions. To be more precice (Dassonville Judgment) any direct or indirect or potential restiction is not allowed and can be challenged before a court in the resticting state. As EU Law and Judgments take precedence over national law conflicting national laws will be overruled by their own courts in favor of the EU Law or otherwise be overruled by a higher court. Examples of indirect restrictions are state specific naming regulations or quality standards. The only accepted exceptions to this regulation is in cases of serious health or pollution concerns or in a situation of national crisis.

2. Feedom of settlement, Art. 43, 50 EU
Any commercial enterprise or service legal in any member state has the right to settle in any other state and offer their services. As a basic principal of all EU Law any direct, indirect or potential restriction of the freedom is not allowed. For example restrictions such as specific education for certain professions in Germany would not hinder a european citizen to pratice his profession should he have compareable standing/education allowing him conduct in his origin state. This again is a very clear freedom which has been processed and won time and again before courts, even though today many elder judges still fail to recognize and acknowledge this.

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