The doctrine of direct effect is perhaps the most important development in the history of EU law. It flowed from the early finding of the CJEU that the EU constituted a 'new legal order', to which the Member States had partially surrendered their sovereignty. It made sense that the legal norms of this new legal order should be able to penetrate and have an effect in the national legal systems. While all EU law could in principle have a direct effect, the precise scope of direct effect is contested. Directives serve as an example of this question, as they can be directly effective against the state but not the individual. However, this divide has been eroded over time.