Report comment

1. Article 5 of the 1966 Vienna Convention (VCLT) expressly states that the convention applies to constitutional treaties of international organisations without prejudices to the relevant rules of such organisations. That includes rules as to how the organisations constituent instruments are to be interpreted.

2. There is no hierarchy between the three elements of Article 31 (1) of the VCLT (wording, context, purpose) and the ECJ has based its interpretative approach on the special nature of the unique treaties under which it operates.

3. Member States are the masters of the EU treaties. If they were not happy with the ECJ's long-standing interpretative approach to such treaties, they would have corrected this in the treaties themselves as they were amended several times in their history.

4. The suggestion that the ECJ is always partial to the EU's interest would apply with equal force to any state court in proceedings against the government, yet we accept that UK courts are impartial vis-a-vis the administration when they interpret UK law. Why then object to the ECJ interpreting EU laws?

5. The "degrading" position of the UK is of its own doing. The UK cannot expect the EU to sacrifice the autonomy of its legal order to suit the interests of a departing member. This is yet another example of the familiar "have cake and eat it approach". The UK has degraded itself.