Quick guide to EU legislation
Description
This article is from the European Union FAQ, by Roland Siebelink & Bart Schelfhout with numerous contributions by others.
Quick guide to EU legislation
EU legislation is known for its complexities and subtleties. The following
Quick guide to EU legislation, however, gives a good overview of the main
instruments used. It has been contributed by Kevin Coates[11] and Richard
Corbett[12] (who supplied a new version of the part about +decisions;)
+All legislation is concluded by some combination of:
European Commission[13] (makes proposals and oversees the process)
European Parliament[14] and
Council of Ministers[15] (ie the representatives of the Member States and
by far the most important)
MAIN TYPES OF LEGISLATION
Regulations These are effectively equivalent to statutes in the UK
[or +Arrjti Ministeriel/Royal; that most member states
have an equivalent of, RS] - ie they are effective as
law without any further intervention/action on the
part of the Member States.
Directives
These are +binding as to the result to be achieved; - ie they should state
the goal/end-state that is aimed at, but leave the
Member States with some discretion as to how to
achieve it. The amount of discretion varies greatly.
One of the reasons for the use of directives is that
it is believed that the different Member States would
need to approach the same problems in different ways
because of the differences in their legal systems.
Because directives need to be +transposed; into national law (ie national
legislation must be passed to implement the goals of
the directive) a time limit is provided in the
directive by which time the directive must have been
implemented. Some cynical people who look closely at
directives believe that increasingly directives have
been used in circumstances where the Member States
simply want to avoid a particular piece of legislation
coming into force - ie there is no real question of
needing to implement it in a particular way, but the
Member States want to take advantage of the time for
transposition. Because the Member States must
transpose the directives, they obviously have a
certain measure of discretion as to how this is
done.
+Decisions Decisions do not have general application but are
binding on those to whom they are addressed (e.g.
companies).;
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