| dc.description.abstract | On 14 July 1975, the European Commission submitted a request for an Opinion of the Court on the compatibility of an ‘envisaged agreement’ with the EEC Treaty, in accordance with what was then the second subparagraph of Article 228(1) EEC (now, as amended, Article 218(11) TFEU). The agreement was a draft ‘Understanding’, negotiated within the OECD, on a local cost standard for export credit schemes. Opinion 1/75, handed down barely four months later in November 1975, represented a number of ‘firsts’: it was the first time that this prior compatibility (Opinion) procedure for international agreements had been used; it was the first case in which the Court assessed the scope of the Community’s treaty-making powers in the field of trade; and in this ruling, the Court first decided that the conclusion of international agreements in the field of trade policy (the Common Commercial Policy, CCP) was an exclusive Community competence. Indeed, for the first time, the Court clearly separated the issues of existence and exclusivity of external competence. However, the case is not only an important historical marker: several of its dicta are still regularly cited and the underlying rationale of Opinion 1/75 is still current, visible in contemporary debates on trade policy, on exclusivity and on the function of the Opinion procedure itself. | |
