Law Articles

Return to Law Dictionary Index

Law in the European Union

The European Union is unique among international organizations in having a complex and highly developed system of internal law which has direct effect within the legal systems of its member states. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has largely molded the development of law of the European Community (the technical term for what we mostly understand as the EU). In the landmark case of Van Gend en Loos in 1963, the ECJ ruled that the European Community, through the express will of member states in the treaty, "constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights albeit within limited fields." The EU is not a federal government, nor is it an intergovernmental organization. It involves reciprocal agreement within its fields of activity, as if countries have agreed to work together to agree.

There are three sources of Union law:

• Primary legislation: the Treaties of the European Union
  
• Secondary legislation: European Union regulations, European Union directives, European Union decisions, European Union recommendations and European Union opinions made by the Union's institutions in accordance with the treaties
  
• Decisions of the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance
  

The distinction between European Community (EC) law and European Union law is that based on the treaty structure of the European Union. The European Community constitutes one of the three pillars of the European Union and concerns the social and economic foundations of the single market. The second and the third pillars were created by the Treaty of the European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) and involve Common Security and Defense Policy and Internal Security. Decision making under the second and third pillars is not subject to majority voting at present. The Maastricht Treaty created the Justice and Home Affairs pillar as the third pillar. Subsequently, the Treaty of Amsterdam transferred the areas of illegal immigration, visas, asylum, and judicial co-operation to the European Community (the first pillar). Now Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters is the third pillar. Justice and Home Affairs now refers both to the fields that have been transferred to the EC and the third pillar.

It should be noted that the European Union recently drafted a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe that must be ratified by the European Union member states before entering into force.

Primary legislation: the treaties
: ''Main article: Treaties of the European Union''

The primary legislation, or treaties, are effectively the constitutional law of the European Union. They lay down the basic policies of the Union, establish its institutional structure, legislative procedures, and the powers of the Union. The treaties that make up the primary legislation include:

• the ECSC Treaty of 1951 (Treaty of Paris (1951))
  
• the EEC Treaty of 1957 (Treaty of Rome (1957))
  
• the EURATOM Treaty of 1957 (Treaty of Rome)
  
• the Merger Treaty of 1965
  
• the Acts of Accession of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark (1972)
  
• the Budgetary Treaty of 1970
  
• the Budgetary Treaty of 1975
  
• the Act of Accession of Greece (1979)
  
• the Acts of Accession of Spain and Portugal (1985)
  
• the Single European Act of 1986
  
• the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992
  
• the Acts of Accession of Austria, Sweden and Finland (1994)
  
• the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997
  
• the Treaty of Nice of 2001
  
• the Treaty of Accession 2003 of 2003
  

The various annexes and protocols attached to these treaties are also considered a source of primary legislation.

Secondary legislation

Secondary legislation includes European Union regulations, European Union directives, European Union decisions, European Union recommendations and European Union opinions.

Secondary legislation also includes inter-institutional agreements, which are agreements made between European Union institutions clarifying their respective powers, especially in budgetary matters. The European Parliament, European Commission and Council of the European Union are capable of entering into such agreements.

The classification of legislative acts varies among the First, Second and Third Pillars.

In the case of the first pillar: Secondary legislation is classified based on to whom it is directed, and how it is to be implemented. Regulations and directives bind everyone, while decisions only affect the parties to whom they are addressed (which can be individuals, corporations, or member states). Regulations have direct effect, i.e. they are binding in and of themselves as part of national law, while directives require implementation by national legislation to be effective. However, the European Court of Justice can fine states that fail or refuse to implement directives as part of national law.

Directives and regulations can comprise of a mixture of maximum harmonization and minimum harmonization clauses, and can be enforced on either a home state regulation or a host state regulation state basis.

All EU legislation must be based on a specific treaty article, which is referred to as the
"legal basis" of the legislation.

The European Convention's Working Group on Simplification, identified in total 15 legal instruments of the European Union. These, divided in the three pillars of the European Union are the following:

• Community Pillar
  
• Common Foreign and Security Policy
  
• Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters
  

European Union Regulations
European Union Directives
European Union Decisions

Conventions

Principles and general guidelines
Common strategies
Joint actions
Common positions
European Union Decisions

Common positions
Framework decisions
European Union Decisions
Conventions

Recommendations, European Union Opinions

If the planned European Constitution is ratified, these acts will be reduced to only six: EU laws, EU framework laws, decisions, regulations, recommendations and opinions.

Legislative procedures
There are three main legislative procedures in the European Union, with the main difference between them being how the European Parliament interacts with the Council of the European Union.

• Codecision procedure
  
• Assent procedure
  
• Consultation procedure
  

History of decision-making

Initially, the Consultation procedure was the primary interplay of the institutions. Under it, Council must wait (unless it initiates an emergency procedure) for the EP�s opinion before adopting the legislation. This possibility for delay was in the early days the EP�s only weapon.

The role of the European Parliament in this institutional triangle has been gradually strengthened.
Major landmarks in this gradual strengthening process have been

• the transferal of budget responsibilities during the early 70s,
  
• the first direct elections in 1979,
  
• the introduction of the Cooperation procedure with the Single European Act (1986/87) and
  
• the codecision procedure with the Maastricht Treaty (1993/93), whose scope was expanded considerably by the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997/99) and the Treaty of Nice (2001).
  

Acquis

The whole body of EU law is together called the Acquis or acquis communautaire, broken into 32 chapters for purposes of accession negotiations.

Specific topics in EU law

• European Company Statute
  
• Community Patent
  
• Corpus Juris or Acquis
  
• EU competition law
  
• Direct effect
  
• Indirect effect
  
• Incidental effect
  
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
  
• Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data
  
• Gold-plating
  
• Maximum harmonization
  
• Minimum harmonization
  
• Home state regulation
  
• Host state regulation
  

Return to General Practice

Return to Law Dictionary Index