February 5, 1963

Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen

Court of Justice issues the Van Gend en Loos direct-effect judgment

A customs dispute over glue-making chemicals became the vehicle for remaking Europe's legal order — and the company that brought it went home without a refund.

Case 26/62

On 5 February 1963 the Court of Justice delivered its preliminary ruling in Case 26/62, referred by the Dutch Tariefcommissie in litigation between the transport undertaking Van Gend en Loos and the Netherlands tax administration.

The goods were an aqueous urea-formaldehyde product used as glue in making wooden doors, imported on 9 September 1960 and charged 8 percent. Van Gend en Loos said the earlier rate had been 3 percent; the Dutch administration argued it was 10.

The tribunal wanted to know whether a private company could invoke Treaty Article 12 in a domestic court at all.

A new legal order

The Court held that the European Economic Community constituted a new legal order whose subjects included both member states and their nationals.

Article 12 produced direct effects and created individual rights that national courts were required to protect. A rule written as a command to governments had become a source of enforceable rights for a private firm.

The Court also held that a prohibited increase could arise either from a higher rate or from a tariff rearrangement placing the same product in a more highly taxed classification.

What the judges declined to settle

The Court did not rule on the refund. It left the Tariefcommissie to determine the disputed historical classification and apply the European ruling to the claim.

Nor did it make all Community law directly effective. The reasoning turned on Article 12 being a clear, unconditional negative obligation requiring no national implementing measure.

Article 12 was a standstill clause barring new or increased intra-Community duties; it did not command progressive tariff reductions, and a reclassification breached it only if the same product then bore a higher duty than the one actually applied when the Treaty entered into force.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 4 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →