Acquis communautaire
- (Photo: European Commission)
The complete body of EU legislation is over 100,000 pages long in the Official Journal, around 17,000 different legal acts can be found in Celex.
The full acquis is difficult to define; it can be described as the total body of European Union law applicable to the EU Member States. It is constantly evolving and comprises:
- the content, principles and political objectives of the Treaties;
- legislation adopted pursuant to the Treaties and the case law of the Court of Justice;
- declarations and resolutions adopted by the Union;
- instruments under the Common Foreign and Security Policy;
- instruments under Justice and Home Affairs;
- international agreements concluded by the Community and those entered into by the Member States among themselves within the sphere of the Union's activities.
Thus, it includes all treaties, all legislation valid today, all EU Court verdicts, all types of decisions from the second (Foreign and Security Policy) and third pillars (Justice and Home Affairs), as well as soft law.
The Acquis Communautaire is translated in the following 22 languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene and Swedish. Irish (Gaelic) translations are not currently available.
The concept of the acquis communautaire includes the primacy of EU law and other principles developed by the Court, partly through legal activism. Member States are bound to accept future majority decisions and verdicts from the EU Court. The primacy of EU law was declared in the rejected EU Constitution art. I-6. This article was deleted in the Lisbon Treaty. Instead, it was inserted as a footnote with the same content and with a specific reference to the Court verdicts establishing the primacy of EU law.
Adoption and implementation of the acquis are the basis of the accession negotiations. This principle was included in the rejected Constitution. The different areas for which reforms are needed in order to meet the accession conditions are called "chapters of the acquis". The candidate countries are required to adapt their administrative and institutional infrastructures and to bring their national legislation in line with Community legislation in the areas of the different chapters. These are reviewed during the screening of the acquis and are evaluated regularly up until the time each chapter is closed.
The acquis concept is crucial to understanding the EU and the ongoing enlargement and constitutional processes.
Notes
- The Danish Parliament has been told that there were around 26,000 documents sent to the applicant countries for approval.
- Commissioner Günter Verheugen, responsible for enlargement until November 2004, has said there are over 20,000 acts.
Links
Sources and scope of Community law http://www.europarl.eu.int/factsheets/1_2_1_en.htm
