The appellant challenged the import licensing regime (Regulation 2107/74) in the Frankfurt Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgericht), but the case was dismissed.
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.
[4][5] In contrast to the earlier Solange I decision, the Federal Constitutional Court accepted the judgment of the ECJ as binding and final in Germany.
[7] Rather they suspended this scrutiny, to be renewed if a case could demonstrate a decline of fundamental rights standards in the EU below those guaranteed by the Basic Law.
[9] The Solange Doctrine of the GFCC spurred the ECJ and EU institutions to eventually develop their own systems of fundamental rights protection, offering an equal or higher level of protection than the German Basic Law.