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The Problem of Quality in EU Legislation: What on Earth is Really Wrong?

Despite the recent qualms about the obviously bad quality of EU legislative texts, in the past the quality and style of legislation at the EU level was treated as an irrelevance by EU legislators and legal commentators alike. This was mainly due to the fact that, especially with reference to Directives, the main aim of EU drafters has been to achieve the actual passing of new legislation agreed by all or most of the fifteen Member States whose difference in interests and legal systems rendered the procedure of passing legislation at the EU level a rather lengthy and painful sequence of sensitive compromises. After all, EU law has often been considered a droit diplomatique. In this already difficult process concerns on the quality or style of the text produced was viewed, and possibly not without basis, a mere luxury. However, a combination of two events changed this attitude. First, the introduction of detailed legislation on an increasing number of fields of law created extensive rights and obligations addressed and enjoyed by individuals. EU natural and legal persons are increasingly being called to comply with complex EU legislation affecting a huge chunk of their lives and ranging from equal employment rights to sex equality and from the determination of technical standards for products sold within the EU to the accountancy obligations of EU companies. Second, the introduction and further development of the direct effects principle signified that most EU legislative texts -even Directivesare applicable within Member States even if they are not transposed into national law. This, by definition, demanded EU legislative texts which can be easily interpreted and smoothly applied by national courts even when the EU text is the only source of relevant law available to national judges. Moreover, while this was taking place at the individual level, Member States were finding the task of transposing the large number of Single Market measures into their national laws rather difficult to cope with. At the same time, as Jean-Claude Piris, the Director-General of the Council Legal Service, the institutions themselves found the task of passing accessible