It may be objected that such proposals can hardly be reconciled with the supremacy of Community law and the rules according to which international law of the EEA Agreement prevails over domestic law. However, automatic application of such priority rules would not alter the fact that far-reaching tensions could occur between secondary EEC or EEA law of lesser significance and guarantees of fundamental rights enshrined in domestic legislation and deservedly occupying a higher status. In such cases, contradictions arise between the hierarchy of values whereby fundamental rights as standards of central significance take precedence over legal standards whose content is less important and the hierarchy of norms whereby European integration law overrides all forms of domestic law. To my mind, the solution for such cases lies not so much in a potentially problematic reservation in favour of one's own Constitution as in an attempt to bring hierarchies of values and hierarchies of norms back into unison at a supra-national level. Thus, a satisfactory solution might be found in very many, if not all, cases.
European law is applied with a reservation in respect of human rights.
Such application is all the more imperative since the ECHR already represents a part of the European legal order which is of great significance for European integration. 2 Article 1, para. 1 of the EEA Agreement. Article 6 of the EEC Treaty. For the EEC cf.