Law and Practice of the Common Commercial Policy

While provisions relating to a common commercial policy (CCP) were already to be found in Articles 110- 116 of the original Treaty of Rome, and a common customs tariff was established during the 1960s,1 it was only in an Opinion of 1975 that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed explicitly that the CCP belongs to the area of the exclusive competence of the Community.2 The Court held that the field of export credits fell under the ccp, observing that a concurrent competence of the Member States would distort competition between undertakings of the various Member States. In subsequent case law, the Court, as far as the trade in goods was concerned, confirmed its fairly broad understanding of the concept of ccp, including various sorts of restrictions or regulations such as technical, sanitary and other barriers to trade and tariff preferences in favour of developing countries--