Nicholas Bevan explains why national law shouldn’t be permitted to undermine the effectiveness of Community law
Uninsured drivers are an unpleasant hazard of modern life. Not only are they statistically more prone to accidents, but their inconsiderate approach to insurance puts their victims in jeopardy of being denied their compensatory entitlement.
We have seen from the first two articles in this series, highlighting how the government is failing to compensate RTA victims, that the primary source of law in this area of practice are the six Motor Vehicle Insurance Directives (MVID) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings that interpret and apply them (see NLJ, 1 February 2013, p 94 and NLJ, 8 February 2013, p 130).
The first MVID was adopted by the Community and became law in 1972. The last consolidating MVID was adopted in 2009. Both the MVIDs and the ECJ rulings have precedence over both our national legislature and judiciary. Between them, they serve as a blueprint to enable the UK to transpose the legislative intention of the Community into our national law.
