Re Wünsche Handelsgesellschaft (22 October 1986) BVerfGE 73, 339, is a German constitutional law and EU law case, popularly known as Solange II, concerning the conflict of law between the German national legal system and European Union law.

Facts

An EC import licensing system was challenged in the German Court. The ECJ held that the system was valid in Wünsche Handelsgesellschaft v Germany.^[1]

Judgment

The Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) held that it would not give close scrutiny now. It considered, since the 1974 decision, the ECJ’s development of protection for fundamental rights, the adoption of declarations on rights and democracy by the Community institutions, and that all EC Member States had acceded to the European Convention on Human Rights.

In view of these developments, it must be held that, so long as the European Communities (Solange die Europäischen Gemeinschaften...) and in particular the case law of the European Court, generally ensure an effective protection of fundamental rights as against the sovereign powers of the Communities which is to be regarded as substantially similar to the protection of fundamental rights required unconditionally by the Constitution, and in so far as they generally safeguard the essential content of fundamental rights, the Federal Constitutional Court will no longer exercise its jurisdiction to decide on the applicability of secondary Community legislation cited as the legal basis for any acts of German civil courts or authorities within the sovereign jurisdiction of the Federal Republic of Germany, and it will no longer review such legislation by the standard of the fundamental rights contained in the Constitution.

This in effect meant that the authority of the ECJ in Germany was accepted by the Federal Court, so long as the ECJ rulings conformed to the principles of German national law.^[2][3]