De una factura de electricidad impagada a la primacía del derecho europeo: así nació la jurisprudencia "Costa/Enel"

Whilst Costa v. ENEL is the starting point for most accounts of the primacy of EU law, the story of that lawsuit is still relatively unknown. What drove Flaminio Costa to sue his electricity provider over a bill of as little as £1,925 (about 22 euros today)? Why did the small-claims court of Milan d...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Arena, Amedeo
Format: Article
Language:Spanish
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/oaiart?codigo=8195004
Source:Revista de Derecho Comunitario Europeo, ISSN 1138-4026, Año nº 25, Nº 70, 2021, pags. 897-931
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Summary: Whilst Costa v. ENEL is the starting point for most accounts of the primacy of EU law, the story of that lawsuit is still relatively unknown. What drove Flaminio Costa to sue his electricity provider over a bill of as little as £1,925 (about 22 euros today)? Why did the small-claims court of Milan decide to involve both the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice in such a ‘petty’ lawsuit? Why did those two courts hand down rulings going in opposite directions? How did the lawsuit end when it came back to the Milan small-claims court? Relying upon previously undisclosed court documents and interviews with some of the actors involved, this article seeks to shed some light on the less-known aspects of the Costa v. ENEL lawsuit, against the background of electricity nationalization in Italy at the height of the Cold War, and to assess the contribution of that lawsuit and of its ‘architect’, Gian Galeazzo Stendardi, to the development of the doctrine of primacy of European Union law.