European Union (Amendment) Bill

My hon. and learned Friend might remember the seminal case of Costa v. ENEL. If I may, I will quote briefly from the ECJ's findings."““The transfer by the states from their domestic legal system to the community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the community cannot prevail.””" In other words, the root of what my hon. and learned Friend is saying—and in contradistinction to the assertion by the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt)—is that the European Court of Justice already has a view on its constitutional role, which is that, according to its assertions, domestic law cannot be allowed to prevail against Community law.