Last December, a certain grey-haired gentleman clothed in red and resident in a magical-seeming faraway land dropped a gift - carefully crafted by himself and his little band of helpers - down the chimney of Minister for Health Leo Varadkar.
Too bad for Leo Varadkar that the grey-haired gentleman on this occasion happened to be the Cypriot Judge Constantinos Lycourgos - and his helpers the Second Chamber of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Their Christmas offering - doubtless about as welcome to the Minister as a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking - was the December 23rd ruling Scotch Whisky Association v Lord Advocate that legislation on the lines of Scotland’s draft minimum unit pricing for alcohol is illegal under EU law.
Varadkar had very little reason to be pleased with this judgment. Ireland’s own Public Health (Alcohol) Bill 2015, approved by the Government as late as December 8th, proposed pretty much the same approach as the Scots deployed for combating excessive alcohol consumption. (Indeed, mindful of this, the Government in Dublin actually intervened before the Court of Justice in this case to support the Scottish measures, but to no avail.)
The legally binding Court of Justice ruling should not have come as too much of a surprise to the Government: it had been flagged last September by the advisory opinion of Advocate General Yves Bot.
Source: Gavin Barrett, The Irish Times, 05/02/16
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