EU legislative acts

Community policies are implemented by the European Union through a series of legislative and non-legislative juridical acts having different nature, coercive degree and specificity level.

The main acts are: regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions. Furthermore there are also the Green Paper, the White Paper and other tools used to share the results of studies and consultations realized at EU level.

Regulation: according to art. 249 of the Institution Treaty of the EEC “the regulation is a normative act with general nature. It is mandatory in all its elements an is directly applicable in each Member State”. Member States  are obliged to implement it without any kind of exceptions or modifications. Regulations may have physical or juridical persons as addressees, but also public or private subjects.

Directive: according to art. 249 of the Institution Treaty of the EEC “the Directive binds Members States to certain objectives to be achieved, leaving leaving them free to decide the right means to achieve that result” The Directive need some implementing measures which transfer its prescriptions at national level.

Normally  a  deadline is given to Member States  to implement the Directive into the national legislation. They are free to adopt more restrictive or more specific prescriptions but its content is the minimum compulsory set of norms. Like the Regulation, the Directive is mandatory in all its elements but it leaves some space to the legislation initiative of the Member State.

Decision: it is normative act with specific nature, applicable both to Member States and to single juridical persons or, in extreme cases, also to physical persons. It’s distinguished from the regulation by being of individual application and from directive by being binding in its entirety.

Recommendation: these are two kind of non binding decision  aimed at favouring a certain behaviour or at expressing a common evaluation, which is shared at EU level.

Opinion are normally used to make known the point of view of the issuing EU institution on a certain matter. So, it refers to an actual EU initiative being considered or planned.