to give “full effect” to EU law.2 This duty is a matter of concern both to legislators and courts in the member states.The question of how far they can be expected to adapt their legal cultures to the standards of EU law is especially noticeable when the European Commission considers that a particular member state has failed to implement a Community law directive.The reason for this is that the states enjoy a certain amount of freedom when implementing directives.They can choose the means and methods, so long as the objectives of the directive are fulfilled. In2002 Sweden was the subject of a decision in such a case.3 In 1999 Sweden was sued for incomplete implementation of a directive on consumer protection, the so-called Unfair ContractTerms Directive.4The Swedish government had without question implemented the directive in the usual way by enacting a new statute, but the Commission considered the statute to be incomplete.To understand the action taken by the Commission it is necessary to first briefly consider the technical construction of the directive and the legislative technique with which the Swedish government implemented it.The intention of the directive was to establish aminimum protection level for EU consumers.Article 3, the main provision, defined the conditions under which a specific contract term henceforth would be judged unfair, or not.The third paragraph stated that “the annex shall contain an indicative and non-exhaustive list of contract terms which may be regarded as unfair”.The directive thus included a separate annex with a list of examples of contract terms, the use of which from then on could be ruled as unfair. The Swedish government, however, when preparing the statute which served as a measure of implementation, chose to insert this annex not into the statute itself, but into the motivating text of the so-called proposition - that is, the proposal for anew statute submitted to parliament, including motivations and discussions, emphasising the point that the annex would serve merely as an instrument of interpretation.The exclusion of the annex from the statute itself was an incomplete implementation, according to the Commission. The main argument was that the directive conferred new rights upon EU citizens. It is imperative that EU consumers are able to acquire full re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 196 2 For the sole purpose of this essay “EU law” and “Community law” are used as synonyms. 3 Case C-478/99 Commission v. Sweden. 4 Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts.
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