The Virtue of Cassis de Dijon 25 Years Later—It Is Not Dead, It Just Smells Funny

Abstract

This piece specifies how and where the Cassis de Dijon case influenced EU internal market regulation. For a start, I will place the case into the more general context of internal market integration. I will then highlight the different concepts that have been developed from the Cassis de Dijon case such as e.g. the theory of the information paradigm, the confident consumer, the principle of mutual recognition, and the “new approach”. I will show how each of these concepts has developed in the course of internal market law. Finally, I will conclude that albeit that these principles have come under attack from various sources, the lessons drawn from Cassis de Dijon still remain the yardstick for the evaluation of internal market law today. I have to apologize for the lack of modesty by relying occasionally on works that I have published earlier. I take this contribution also as an opportunity to react to criticism on previous publications of mine by putting them into the more general context of internal market regulation.