The Country of Origin (COO) Principle is frequently used as the template for secondary legislation aiming at realizing the internal market. The main feature of the harmonization using this model is that the home Member State should enforce the minimum requirement agreed on for issuing the relevant authorization, licence, etc. The other Member States in which the authorization, etc., is used (the host Member States) should recognize the harmonization and should neither enforce their own conditions for issuing an authorization, etc., nor try to make a parallel enforcement of the harmonized minimum requirement. Thus, the proper compliance with this type of harmonization faces two challenges: how to ensure that the host Member State enforces the minimum requirements agreed upon and continues to ensure that these are complied with, and how to ensure that the host Member States do not take it upon themselves to enforce the same requirements. If these two challenges are not overcome, the harmonization is not likely to work as intended, and consequently both the EU legislator and the Court of Justice of the European Union have taken different steps to overcome these challenges. By focusing on a selection of different areas using the COO Principle (insurance, driving licence, road haulage transport, audiovisual media services and credit institutions) these challenges and the remedies put in place to overcome them are analysed. This includes an analysis of recent reforms undertaken in these areas as well as an analysis of relevant case law. It is shown that different approaches have been used successfully to ensure better compliance, but there also seems to be approaches that are either less functional or a ‘no go’.
European Public Law