Saturday, 29 October 2011

Community acquis


...............................................Acquis communautaire
The Community acquis[1] or acquis communautaire (English pronunciation: /ˈækiː kəˈmjuːnətɛər/,
sometimes called the EU acquis, and often shortened to acquis,[2] 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 agreed upon", and communautaire meaning "of the community".
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Contents

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[edit]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:

  1. Free movement of goods
  2. Free movement of persons
  3. Freedom to provide services
  4. Free movement of capital
  5. Company law
  6. Competition policy
  7. Agriculture
  8. Fisheries
  9. Transport policy
  10. Taxation
  11. Economic and Monetary Union
  12. Statistics
  13. Social policy and employment
  14. Energy
  15. Industrial policy
  16. Small and medium-sized enterprises
  1. Science and research
  2. Education and training
  3. Telecommunication and information technologies
  4. Culture and audio-visual policy
  5. Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments
  6. Environment
  7. Consumers and health protection
  8. Cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs
  9. Customs union
  10. External relations
  11. Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)
  12. Financial control
  13. Financial and budgetary provisions
  14. Institutions
  15. Others

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:

  1. Free movement of goods
  2. Freedom of movement for workers
  3. Right of establishment and freedom to provide services
  4. Free movement of capital
  5. Public procurement
  6. Company law
  7. Intellectual property law
  8. Competition policy
  9. Financial services
  10. Information society and media
  11. Agriculture and rural development
  12. Food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy
  13. Fisheries
  14. Transport policy
  15. Energy
  16. Taxation
  17. Economic and monetary policy
  18. Statistics
  1. Social policy and employment
    (including anti-discrimination and equal
  2. opportunities for women and men)
  3. Enterprise and industrial policy
  4. Trans-European networks
  5. Regional policy and coordination of
  6. structural instruments
  7. Judiciary and fundamental rights
  8. Justice, freedom and security
  9. Science and research
  10. Education and culture
  11. Environment
  12. Consumer and health protection
  13. Customs union
  14. External relations
  15. Foreign, security and defence policy
  16. Financial control
  17. Financial and budgetary provisions
  18. Institutions
  19. Other issues

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

5th Enlargement6th Enlargement
1. Free movement of goods1. Free movement of goods
7. Intellectual property law
2. Free movement of persons2. Freedom of movement for workers
3. Right of establishment and freedom to
provide services
3. Freedom to provide services3. Right of establishment and freedom to
provide services
9. Financial services
4. Free movement of capital4. Free movement of capital
5. Company law6. Company law
6. Competition policy8. Competition policy
5. Public procurement
7. Agriculture11. Agriculture and rural development
12. Food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy
8. Fisheries13. Fisheries
9. Transport policy14. Transport policy
21. Trans-European networks (one half of it)
10. Taxation16. Taxation
11. Economic and Monetary Union17. Economic and monetary policy
12. Statistics18. Statistics
13. Social policy and employment19. Social policy and employment
(including anti-discrimination and equal opportunities for
women and men)
14. Energy15. Energy
21. Trans-European networks (one half of it)
15. Industrial policy20. Enterprise and industrial policy
16. Small and medium-sized enterprises
17. Science and research25. Science and research
18. Education and training26. Education and culture
10. Information society and media
19. Telecommunication and information technologies
20. Culture and audio-visual policy
21. Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments22. Regional policy and coordination of structural
instruments
22. Environment27. Environment
23. Consumer and health protection28. Consumer and health protection
24. Cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs23. Judiciary and fundamental rights
24. Justice, freedom and security
25. Customs union29. Customs union
26. External relations30. External relations
27. Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)31. Foreign, security and defence policy
28. Financial control32. Financial control
29. Financial and budgetary provisions33. Financial and budgetary provisions
30. Institutions34. Institutions
31. Others35. Other issues

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.

[edit]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):[3]

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):[4]

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.


[edit]References

  1. ^ EuroVoc: Community acquis
  2. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary. "acquis communautaire". dictionary.com. Retrieved 18 August 2010.
  3. ^ Section 12, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Resolution 1290
  4. ^ Intervention by Ambassador Aleksi Härkönen, Permanent Representative of Finland to the OSCE,
  5. Annual Security Review Conference.



  • 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
    .

Posted by Britannia Radio at 13:53