Van Gend en Loos
An EU Court case from 1963 stating that treaty articles can be binding without the need for adopting a specific law. This new principle invented by the Court is called „direct effect”.
The Van Gend & Loos judgment and Costa-Enel with primacy of EU-law are the two most important judgments in the development of the Community legal order.
The European Court of Justice specifies that the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law where the member states have limited their sovereign rights. Its subjects do not only comprise the member states as in normal international organisations. The Community can bind individuals and companies as well directly.
Links
See Direct effect
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:61962J0026:EN:HTML