Talk:European Union law/Archive 1

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Archive 1


1

Moving text from European Community law to European Union Law require some more edits. --Ann O'nyme 22:39, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

2

Is the "L" supposed to be capitalized? Tuf-Kat

What "L"?

71.241.117.83 (talk) 14:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

This article should be further split

Some of the detail in this article properly belongs in EU treaties... Some of it is already mostly duplicated at acquis. Some of it should be made into a new article about the three pillars... On the whole less detail about *those issues* should exist in this article. I've already done some of the job of transferring info to EU treaties and I'll still do some more work in the coming days, but if anyone else is willing to assist, it'd be good. :-) Aris Katsaris 01:20, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Expanding the article

I notice this discussion page has had little attention, but just in case anybody can help, or is concerned, I just wanted to do a post about expanding the article. We could use more explanation of 'substantive' EU law, beyond what is already an excellent overview of the treaties and sources of EU law.

I just wanted to start with one change, which is to move some of the intro (about primary, secondary legislation and case law) to a new heading "Sources of EU law". Under this goes the treaty discussion that is already there. Then I hope to add headings about how the law in the EU works, e.g. law on the internal market (free movement of goods, services, capital and labour: the four freedoms) ; law on the institutions structure (notoriously confusing stuff, over the Council of Ministers, Parliament, Commission) ; a brief part on competition law ; stuff on the second and third pillars, and so on. There's quite a lot!!

To assure accuracy, any changes will be straight out of the text listed in further reading - this is Craig and de Burca's EU law, which is meant to be the second best selling book made ever by Oxford University press. The first is supposed to be the Bible! Wikidea 01:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

More expansion

Since this is the main article on EU law, I thought the sections on the ECJ should be expanded a bit,(in spite of the daughter articles); so I have added some information on the courts, with references.--Boson 00:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I was also thinking that there should be an overall discussion of the development of "direct effect", "indirect effect", etc., in greater detail than there is currently in this article but covering details that don't really belong only in one of the daughter articles. --Boson 00:36, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Liechtenstein's Application of European Law

In the article: Microstates and the European Union it states that Liechtenstein partially applies European Law. Which parts of European Law are partially applied in Liechtenstein? mdkarazim (talk) 14:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Certainly not banking transparency regulation!! Wikidea 16:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
See European Economic Area.--Boson (talk) 19:56, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Unbiased writing, please?

This article looks like it was written by the EU itself. It's full of ambiguous language and undefined terms. Could some people outside the EU have a crack at it? 71.241.117.83 (talk) 14:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Unless you can come up with some specific reasons why the article is somehow biased, I'm going to remove the template. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 23:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
On second thoughts, since you didn't indicate in you (empty) edit summary[1] that you were adding a npov tag, I'm going to remove it right now. I keep a watch on this article but there's no way I could have known you'd place a npov tag unless I checked every single edit. If you wish to insist on process, you must as least follow it. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 23:56, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Remember, Wikipedia is something anyone can edit. It is inappropriate to shove up tags and expect others' to guess (a) what is wrong (b) what to do about it, and (c) wait for approval from a disgruntled minority that makes no suggestions. So good work, keep taking those tags down. Wikidea 01:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Irrelevant link looks self-promotion only

I am sorry but it looks that the link below which was found by me in the list of external links is irrelevant here. It says "analysis" but actually does not provide any analytical knowledge. This site looks like a mere personal blog only with simple retelling of current news. The majority of those news are not related to relationships between the EU and Russia at all. Website: eulaw.ru EU Law and Russia: analysis —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.164.223.18 (talk) 20:37, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I would also propose removal of the following links, which don't seem to add much information:
Any reason to keep them?--Boson (talk) 21:35, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

New article needed? - Transfer of Criminal Proceedings

I note that Transfer of Criminal Proceedings is a redlink. This article (and other ext refs) suggest that it ought not to be:

See also:

etc --Mais oui! (talk) 09:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we could do with an article on this, provided we use reliable sources.
From the little I know of it and having had a cursory look at the Telegraph article, I would say, we should probably not regard that section of the British press as a reliable source for the facts. Although there are a number of concerns with the proposals , which should possibly be discussed, the Telegraph article appears to me to be a complete misrepresentation; it looks like a better source for the Euromyth article. In view of the discussion in the UK parliament, it should probably also link to an article on scrutiny by national parliaments, or the role of national parliaments in European Union legislation, which I think is also missing.
It should probably be kept fairly short until there is something concrete. Otherwise we risk all sorts of POV speculation.
--Boson (talk) 20:00, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Unfortunately, due to 'real-world' commitments, I just do not have the time to start up this particular article. But there is no doubt at all that there are several vital areas of EU law that are simply absent from Wikipedia. Very odd, surprising, and most unsatisfactory. The max I could manage at the moment would be a "super-stub", but Wikipedia has far too many of those already!  ;)
Anyway, hopefully the Ext Refs I have provided can be of some small assistance. --Mais oui! (talk) 08:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Nav box

Considering the vast number of articles in Category:European Union law, is anyone able to restore Template:Legislation of the European Union as an independent template that can navigate through all these? My law knowledge is minimal so I've no idea how to arrange this, anyone got a clue and the time to do it?- J.Logan`t: 14:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Knocked up an outline. It needs a lot of work, preferably from someone with a better idea of law than I;

Yes it is a big mess, and maybe putting all the directives in wasn't the best idea but if they could be organised by topic or something, with better names, maybe it could work? Needs more on the profession of course, there are so many articles!- J.Logan`t: 18:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

You definitely don't need the directives, regulations and cases. The EU law stuff has barely been begun to be written, and there's thousands of those things. Wikidea 19:31, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Important caselaw ought to be in there, and those regs and directives ought to have the template on but yes I agree they don't all need to be there. I included them by default so someone can filter out the important things. We need comprehensive lists on them though, we only have one for directives, not regulations, I think.- J.Logan`t: 20:31, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, you're wrong, but I don't much mind. Wikidea 09:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
(I do just mean about max five bit of case law by the way)- J.Logan`t: 09:42, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Here's the template for UK law - and if you hunt around, you'll find the templates for UK legislation somewhere. But trust me, there are just way too many cases, etc. If you tried to include the "most important" ones, then there'd just be endless arguments about which was really most important! Though, if you're interested, here's the list that the EU sends prospective member states... ugh, can't remember where to find it: the EU compiled a list of about 60 or so really important cases from the ECJ and CFI that were to be translated into the languages of the new member states - it's really useful, but the point is, there's quite a lot of important ones! Wikidea 00:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Supremacy

Im a bit sceptical of how this article covers the question of Supremacy. It feels a bit too one sided, and suggests that the problem has been solved, rather than the reality of there not being a real true test yet of the ECJ's rhetoric. You would think from reading the article that the German constitutional court has come round to the idea of the ECJ's thinking, when this is entirely not the case. Interested to hear other's views here before I have a go at amending this section to try and give a more balanced take. I dont think the debate can just be dismissed as one of "academic" relevance only though. --Simonski (talk) 13:56, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Treaties on WikiSource

I've put the full current treaties (minus protocols so far) on WikiSource, so now the present treaties can be cited/linked directly to the article;

- J.Logan`t: 22:31, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Legislative acts

As I read the Treaties, a Regulation, a Directive or a Decision can be either legislative or non-legislative in nature depending on how it was adopted. Those that were adopted through a legislative procedure are called "legislative" and those that were not adopted through a legislative process are non-legislative. A non-legislative Regulation is still generally applicable, binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States. Therefore the distinction in current European Union law between "legislative" or "non-legislative" acts is really rather academic for the addressees: regardless of whether a Regulation was adopted through a legislative procedure or not, it has the same legal value. See Art. 289 (1)and(3) and art. 297 (2) in TFEU Crissim99 (talk) 12:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

General principles of European Union law

I have created the General principles of European Union law article and will integrate it into this article - which will involve a bit of a re-structure.--SasiSasi (talk) 19:00, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I don't think having a separate article on General principles of European Union law serves any purpose. The principles of European Union law should be described here at European Union law. I am not aware of any similarly titled articles for other jurisdictions.

I therefore propose that the information be merged (back) into this article.--Boson (talk) 12:54, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I want to expand the European Union law article - more details on the treaties and directives. Also there are more general principles of European Union law that should be covered. There is much more to European Union law than the principles, and other areas of EU law have their own article, such as the one on European competition law. Maybe wait until I have expanded the European Union law article and then we can judge how much space the general principles should get in relation to primary and secondary sources of EU law, ie treaties and directives.--SasiSasi (talk) 12:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Direct effect and supremacy

The lede currently has

European Union law (historically called European Community law) is a body of treaties, law and court judgements which operates alongside the legal systems of the European Union's member states. It has direct effect within the EU's member states and, where conflict occurs, takes precedence over national law.

I suppose this can be interpreted in a way that is not incorrect, but I would say it is misleading and does not correctly summarize anything in the rest of the article. No citation that verifies the statements about direct effect and supremacy is provided, unless the references are used as a basis for original research. I would say that the sources discuss different interpretations of direct effect and support a statement that some EU law has direct effect (by various usual definitions). They might also support the view that the ECJ is of the opinion that EU law takes precedence without reference to national law, whereas this is disputed by member states. The German Constitutional Court, for instance, "refused to recognise the unconditional supremacy of Community law . . ." (Craig and Búrca, see article footnotes), and it is not for Wikipedia to rule on whether the ECJ or the BVerfG is right.--Boson (talk) 14:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)


The lead is an old one, but the lead should actually summarise what is in the article (the article needs some serious work). I agree that the this part of the lead as it is very much original research. The supremacy section covers for example the German Constitutional court issue. The direct effect and indirect effect sections explain when EU law has direct or indirect effect on the laws of member state. But to be honest I think that is all too much detail for the intro. I have rewritten the first sentence to remove the original research and reflect what is said in the article.--SasiSasi (talk) 16:29, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Its now:

European Union law (historically called European Community law) is a body of treaties and legislation, such as Regulations and Directives, which have direct effect or indirect effect on the laws of European Union member states.

Gibraltar - Special Member State territory of the United Kingdom?

Is Gibraltar a a Special Member State territory of the United Kingdom? Is there any source for this? What I mean is this: Does EU law recognise Gibraltar as a United Kingdom territory?....I am really looking for a specific answer based on references to EU legal sources; my understanding from the EU Treaties is that the EU deliberately takes no position on sovereignty as regards Gibraltar. Any takers for this query? This arises in the context of content on the Gibraltar article (see its info. box). 84.203.74.43 (talk) 19:08, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Hello. Just to respond to this question (granted a bit late!) what I can say is that Gibraltarians vote for their MEPs through the UK. Some would consider this de facto recognition of UK sovereignty over Gibraltar, but obviously this is controversial. If you are looking for some sort of formal EU declaraton that the UK has sovereignty over Gibraltar, you are unlikely to find it - there is no legal basis for such a declaration under the Treaties (everything the EU does must have a legal basis) - of course, it is also a political issue. There is an Annex to the Treaties (#55) from Spain and the UK jointly on the application of the Treaties to Gibraltar. (Connolly15 (talk) 15:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC))

Errant footnote

49. Noah Rosenkranz, (2010). European Union Law: cases and Materials. Cambridge University Press. pp. 113–124. ISBN 9780521126414 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum.

I moved this footnote here from the article page, because it is not assigned to a statement. If the editor who added it would like help adding a footnote, feel free to contact me on my talk page, saying which sentence the footnote refers to. It would be easier if you registered. -Boson (talk) 19:27, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Links

>> Chronic violence against European women(Lihaas (talk) 18:16, 16 March 2014 (UTC)).

Recent changes

There have been some major changes in this article recently and some of the new formulations do not sound very objective. For instance, calling the Commission and the Council unelected institutions is highly controversial. Usually we don't say that national governments are unelected, although they are not directly elected by the people. In fact, the Commission is appointed in a similar way as most national governments in the EU, so why should we call the Commission unelected when we don't call the national governments unelected? Similarly, the Council consists of democratically appointed representatives, all indirectly elected by the people of each member states.

Another strange thing is the text on the Commission's monopoly on initiating legislation. Yes, the Commission has indeed this monopoly and this is a big difference compared to (all?) national parliaments in the member states. BUT, in Sweden for instance (where I come from) it is very rare that the national parliament actually adopts legislation proposed by itself. In practice, it only adopts legislation proposed by the government. So even though the parliament has the right to initiate legislation, almost all adopted legislation is based on proposals from the government. I guess it is similar in other member states. In other words, in practice, the difference might not be that big between the EU level and the national levels when it comes to initiation of legislation. At the same time, the European Parliment makes much more amendments to proposed acts than for instance the Swedish parliament does. I think the current formulations in the article does not really reflect the actual power that the Parliament and the Council have vis-a-vis the Commission, especially since the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force. Don't forget that the Commission is responsible to the Parliament, which can force the Commission to resign by a confidence vote (this is not even mentioned in the article as far as I can see, I might be wrong).

There are certainly many more controversial things that need to be discussed. --Glentamara (talk) 11:09, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I appreciate the effort that has gone into improving the article, but not all the changes are improvements, in my opinion. Also, some problems were there before or may represent an older reality.--Boson (talk) 20:50, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
To avoid inadvertent false impressions, I have added some information going into a little more detail about the legislative procedure. I have also reorganized the section on constitutional law so that the institutions are introduced before discussing their roles in the legislative procedure. --Boson (talk) 22:18, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
I see there is more information on the legislative procedure under "Legislatures", but it was not, in my opinion, appropriately summarized in the introduction to that main section. I would suggest putting this information in a section called "Legislative procedure" (linking to the main article European Union legislative procedure) and providing a better introduction directly under "Constitutional law" that does not give undue weight to the power of the Commission. The previous text used words like "consent" which has the wrong associations (Consent/assent procedure etc.) --Boson (talk) 22:38, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
It looks much better now. Thanks! --Glentamara (talk) 07:45, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for this feedback both of you - my apologies for not noticing, responding sooner. I'll try to make captions less alarming (perhaps they looked a bit anti-EU at first! If so apologies). Boson, I'll try and integrate your important additions in due course (I haven't revised the Treaties section). It's usually good to have summary style at the start of each section; I'll also include more secondary source references. You'll see a lot more coming over the next 5 months. Please do leave comments here if you see something that doesn't look right, and I'll do my best. Wikidea 07:16, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Commission

In the 'Executive institutions' section: This means Commissioners are, through the appointment process, the unelected subordinates of member state governments.

This is quite a bold claim, and it lacks any source. It is a bit jarring especially because this claim comes after a long explanation that: 1) the Commission is subject to the Parliament's approval (which is formally no different compared with how most parliamentary democracy appoint their Prime Minister/Cabinet); 2) the Commissioners are required by the Treaties to be completely independent and not take instructions from any Government.

Now, I know this sort of claims about the Commission are often made, and I am not arguing they have no place in this article. However, the problem is that here they are presented as facts (rather than opinions or criticism) and they are unsourced. Loudo89 (talk) 14:12, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

The material should be removed. The opinion is unsourced and unattributed; as expressed, it is is contrary to the commissioners' oath of office and the treaty obligations of the member states.--Boson (talk) 18:53, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
It can just be mentioned that the commissioners are appointed by the nation states, subject to approval by the parliament (doesn't the commission president have some say?), that would be correct and then people can interpret it how they want. As an aside, the EU system is different from a parliamentary democracy, the cabinet in a parliament is generally chosen from the parliament (there may be exceptions to this but I don't know of one), and the cabinet sits subject to the approval of the parliament. In the EU, the nation states choose their commissioners, and the commission president is decided by the european council (ie the leaders of the nation states), and then approved by the parliament. It may seem small but the difference is, in a parliamentary system, the prime minister (chosen by the parliament) chooses the ministers, who can then be sacked at any time by the parliament, with the EU, the national leaders choose the commission president, and the parliament can only say yes or no once, and don't get another say after that. - 37.173.213.204 (talk) 02:42, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Criticisms

Rather surprised there isn't a section on criticisms, such as = the various countries never actually agreeing to a federal superstate (if you are not worried why not ask the people?) ... or will this too be edited by the bureaucrats? I pay your wages remember (not for much longer :) !! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.171.128.174 (talk) 10:05, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Start a section on opinions about EU law if you want (with appropriate length and placement relative to the article as a whole), only please be careful to ensure that it adheres fully to the policies including Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:No original research. Anything added must be based on reliably sourced citations from prominent adherents or the general public as reported in published mainstream opinion polls, rather than your own personal views, and there should be a balance between the various major viewpoints without giving undue weight to minority views. Also be wary of the risk of biasing the section by basing it disproportionately on opinions held in the UK rather than the EU as a whole; even though this is the English language Wikipedia, foreign-language sources may need to be considered in order to achieve balance in this regard. Calling the section "criticisms" is an automatic recipe for departure from the neutrality policy because it presupposes that quotations opposed to EU law are worthy of inclusion but that quotations in its favour are not. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 06:52, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

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Article way too long

This article is huge and seems to mostly deal with irrelevant stuff that's dealt with elsewhere. The 'History' section is like an entire history of the world, I don't see why it has to be longer than a paragraph, if it even needs to exist at all. The history of the law would be the law itself, the treaties etc. The rest of teh article just outlines the treaties in excruciating, tedious detail. They can be dealt with on their own articles, this page should talk especially about court decisions which interpreted the law one way or the other, as well as important decisions by the parliament and council. anyway, no one's going to read this or care so whatever - 37.173.213.204 (talk) 02:36, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Great ideas. This article is entirely too long. Could sections be opened up similar to the mobile viewing? Teslaedit17 (talk) 02:35, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
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