Acquis communautaire

European Union

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The acquis communautaire (English pronunciation: /ˈæki: kəmˈju:nətɛə/, French pronunciation: [aki kɔmynotɛr]^[1]), sometimes called the EU acquis, and often shortened to acquis,^[1] is the accumulated legislation, legal acts, court decisions which constitute the body of European Union law. The term is French: acquis meaning "that which has been acquired", and communautaire meaning "of the community".

Chapters of the acquis

During the process of the enlargement of the European Union, the acquis was divided into 31 chapters for the purpose of negotiation between the EU and the candidate member states for the fifth enlargement (the ten that joined in 2004 plus Romania and Bulgaria which joined in 2007). These chapters were:

For the negotiations with Croatia and Turkey, the acquis was split up into 35 chapters instead, with the purpose of better balancing between the chapters: dividing the most difficult ones into separate chapters for easier negotiation, uniting some easier chapters, moving some policies between chapters, as well as renaming a few of them in the process:

Correspondence between chapters of the 5th and the 6th Enlargement:

Such negotiations usually involved agreeing transitional periods before new member states needed to implement the laws of the European Union fully and before they and their citizens acquired full rights under the acquis.

Other uses of the word acquis

The term acquis is also used to describe laws adopted under the Schengen Agreement, prior to its integration into the European Union legal order by the Treaty of Amsterdam, in which case one speaks of the Schengen acquis.

The term acquis has been borrowed by the World Trade Organization Appellate Body, in the case Japan - Taxes on Alcoholic Beverages, to refer to the accumulation of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO law ("acquis gattien"), though this usage is not well established.

It has been used to describe the achievements of the Council of Europe (an international organisation unconnected with the European Union):^[2]

The Council of Europe’s acquis in standard setting activities in the fields of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental human rights and freedoms should be considered as milestones towards the great European political project, and the European Court of Human Rights should be recognised as the pre-eminent judicial pillar of any future architecture.

It has also been applied to the body of "principles, norms and commitments" of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE):^[3]

Another question under debate has been how the Partners and others could implement the OSCE acquis, in other words its principles, norms and commitments on a voluntary basis.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) introduced the concept of the OECD Acquis in its "Strategy for enlargement and outreach", May 2004.

References

External links

• EUR-Lex: European Union Law.
• JRC-Acquis, Aligned multilingual parallel corpus: 23,000 Acquis-related texts per language, available in 22 languages. Total size: 1 Billion words.
• Translation Memory of the EU-Acquis: Up to 1 Million translation units each, for 231 language pairs.

Judiciary and law of the European Union Judiciary Court of Justice of the European Union - European Court of Justice (members) - General Court - Civil Service Tribunal - European lawyer - Relationship with ECHR - Public Prosecutor/civil code Treaties Rome Treaty - Merger Treaty - Single European Act - Maastricht Treaty - Amsterdam Treaty - Nice Treaty - Lisbon Treaty - Charter of Fundamental Rights - Opt-outs Instruments Acquis communautaire: Regulation - Directive (Framework Directive) - Decision - Recommendation Procedures Ordinary legislative procedure - Consultation procedure - Assent procedure - Commission and Council acting alone - Commission acting alone Principles and terms Subsidiarity - Supremacy - Direct applicability - Direct effect - Indirect effect - Incidental effect - Gold-plating - Four freedoms - Host state regulation - Home state regulation - Acquis communautaire (EUR-Lex) - Minimum harmonisation - Maximum harmonisation - Home country control - State liability - Proportionality - Principle of legal certainty - Principle of conferral - Preliminary ruling - European labour law- European Enforcement Order Regulations Council Regulation (EC) No. 1206/2001 - Council Regulation (EC) No. 1348/2000 - Customs Regulation 1383/2003 - Regulation 261/2004 - EU-Eco-regulation - Commission Regulation (EC) No 2257/94 - Customs Regulation 3295/94 - Regulation on roaming charges in the European Union - Brussels Regime - CLP Regulation - Regulation on Community designs - European Company Statute - European Union System for the Evaluation of Substances - Commission Regulation (EC) No 474/2006 - REACH - Rome II Regulation Directives Good Clinical Practice Directive - Data Protection Directive - ATEX directive - Battery Directive - Best available technology - Biocidal Products Directive - Birds Directive - Capital Requirements Directive - Clinical Trials Directive - Computer Programs Directive - Conditional Access Directive - Copyright Directive - Copyright Duration Directive (93/98/EEC) - Copyright Term Directive (2006/116/EC) - Cosmetics Directive - Dangerous Substances Directive (67/548/EEC) - Dangerous Preparations Directive - Data Retention Directive - Database Directive - Database right - Directive 2000/43/EC on Anti-discrimination - Directive establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation - Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications - Directive on the Promotion of the use of biofuels and other renewable fuels for transport - Directive on the re-use of public sector information - Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources - End of Life Vehicles Directive - CHP Directive - Directive on the energy performance of buildings - Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights - Directive 2004/38/EC on the right to move and reside freely - Environmental liability directive - European SEA Directive 2001/42/EC - European units of measurement directives - Habitats Directive - Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control - Internal Market in Electricity Directive - Landfill Directive - Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions - Directive on the legal protection of designs - Markets in Financial Instruments Directive - Measuring Instruments Directive - Medical Devices Directive - Posted Workers Directive - Pressure Equipment Directive - Rental Directive - Resale Rights Directive - Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive - Satellite and Cable Directive - Directive on services in the internal market - Temporary and Agency Work Directive - Trade Marks Directive - European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products - Unfair Commercial Practices Directive - Universal Service Directive - Urban Waste Water Directive - Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive - Waste Incineration Directive - Waste framework directive - Water Framework Directive - Working Time Directive Cases ECJ Rulings (Caselex): Allonby v Accrington and Rossendale College - Apostolides v Orams - Bosman - Cassis de Dijon - Chacon Navas v Eurest Colectividades SA - Chen - Ciaran Tobin - Coleman v Attridge Law - Costa v ENEL - Factortame - Francovich - Kamer van Koophandel en Fabrieken voor Amsterdam v Inspire Art Ltd - Kolpak - Microsoft v Commission - Marleasing SA v La Comercial Internacional de Alimentacion SA - Metock - Nordsee - Palacios de la Villa v Cortefiel Servicios SA - Peter Paul and Others v Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Procureur du Roi v Dassonville - Ralf Sieckmann v Deutsches Patent und Markenamt - Tanja Kreil - Van Duyn v Home Office - Van Gend en Loos - Webster Fraud Court of Auditors - European Anti-fraud Office - Accountability in the European Union