Linguistic transparency in the EU and at the Court of Justice: is clear language attainable in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural legislative and judicial environment?

Any lawyer working with EU law – academic, practitioner, government adviser or official of the institutions – has sooner or later exclaimed in exasperation at the text he is trying to decipher, ‘why (oh why?) do they not just say what they mean?’ Everyone has their favourite example of the Regulation or Directive whose drafting is deeply flawed (‘damn Eurobabble’); and the more Delphic utterances of the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘the CJEU’) are a favourite Aunt Sally for Europhobes (and indeed for some of the Court’s most loyal friends). This presentation – intended to be accessible, and hopefully of assistance, to anyone who has contact with EU law – will first explore the factors affecting the ‘inputs’ into (a) EU legislative drafting and (b) cases before the CJEU. It will go on to examine the factors at work on the Court’s own texts (judgments and the opinions of the Advocates General). Finally, it will try to set these factors within a broader context and ask to what extent (some of) the problems identified could be remedied, in whole or in part, so as to achieve greater transparency, accessibility and legal certainty. The intention is not to deliver an ex cathedra statement of eternal truth, but to stimulate interest in, and discussion of, a problem that is both intellectually complex and of deep practical significance.