Description
Book SynopsisThis incisive book evaluates the legal effects of soft law, its foundations and how they behave in some of the most innovative areas of EU law. Combining theory, language and sectoral insights, this comprehensive review uses case studies to shed new light on the three core areas of soft law.
The book opens with an exploration of the meaning and scope of EU soft law’s legal effects from a theoretical and doctrinal perspective. Chapters analyse the role, contribution and broader legal effectiveness of the language employed by EU authorities when drafting soft law instruments. Finally, in a ground-up approach to the research topic, the book discusses soft law’s legal effects within three areas of EU legislation, namely financial supervision, technical standardisation and telecommunications law.
Advancing a legal and argumentative toolkit to evaluate and improve EU soft law’s persuasiveness, this title will be advantageous to academics, practitioners and policy-makers with specialisations in European law, constitutional and administrative law and regulation and governance.
Trade Review‘This outstanding book is an innovative and important contribution to our knowledge and rethinking of soft law, relations to hard law and normative effects. The many theoretical insights and the detailed analysis of normativity, language, and financial supervision, standardization, and telecommunications will be essential reading for all interested in the subject.’ -- Francis Snyder, Peking University School of Transnational Law, China
‘A brilliant contribution to the analysis of EU soft law, but also of soft law in general.’ -- Jean-Bernard Auby, Sciences Po Paris, France
Table of ContentsContents: 1 Introduction to The Legal Effects of EU Soft Law 1 Petra Lea Láncos and Luis Arroyo Jiménez PART I THEORY 2 Beyond bindingness: A typology of EU soft law legal effects 9 Luis Arroyo Jiménez 3 Reconsidering the legal effect of EU soft law in national implementation: Bindingness from an individual rights perspective 33 Wolfgang Weiß 4 EU soft law: validity, normativity and ‘bindingness’ reviewed 53 Verena Rošic Feguš PART II LANGUAGE 5 Words are stones: Constructing bindingness through language in EU environmental soft law 76 Danai Petropoulou Ionescu and Mariolina Eliantonio 6 Verbal markers of ‘softness’ in EU law? A computer-based analysis to delimit soft law and hard law focusing on directive-like recommendations 111 Petra Lea Láncos and Eljalill Tauschinsky 7 A legal-argumentative framework for persuasive EU soft law: The case of the European Commission’s recommendations 142 Corina Andone and Floran Comand-Kund PART III SECTORAL INSIGHTS 8 The comply-or-explain mechanism in the European Supervisory Authorities, or: does Meroni allow nudging? 176 Robert Böttner 9 The legal effects of harmonised standards in EU law: From hard to soft law, and back? 193 Annalisa Volpato 10 Hard rules for soft law: The case of European Union telecommunications law 213 Emanuel Kollmann 11 Conclusions to The Legal Effects of EU Soft Law 233 Petra Lea Láncos and Luis Arroyo Jiménez
