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Publishers Abstract:
In 2000, in its judgment on the first Tobacco Advertising Directive 98/43/EC, the European Court of Justice for the first time annulled a directive on the grounds that the Community exceeded its powers to approximate national laws as laid down in Article 95 EC. The recent judgment on Republic of Germany v. European Parliament and Council of the European Union (Tobacco Advertising II), which was awaited with suspense, can already be described as a leading case on the vertical order of competences in the European Community and merits a differentiated analysis. In its judgment of Dec 12, 2006, the Court followed fully the proposal of the Advocate General and dismissed all five pleas. In the light of those considerations the ECJ concluded that Articles 3 and Article 4 of the Directive did in fact have as their objective the improvement of the conditions for the functioning of the internal market and that they were thus able to be adopted on the basis of Article 95 EC (para 78).
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