Nav 4-1: Directives and regulations

Length	Browsing: 20 minutes Reporting: 30 minutes
Goal	To get a practical feel for the contents of directives and regulations and their level of detail. To get acquainted with the summaries of the EU legislation database.
Introduction	The purpose of this exercise is to get a better feel for the contents of directives and regulations as legislative instruments. The Scadplus website summarizes major legislations for different policy area in an accessible manner. In this exercise, you will look at directives and regulations and see whether you can find differences between these two types of instruments.
Steps	Go to EU summaries of legislation website. Select a policy area that interests you and choose a specific policy. Select one directive and one regulation, and make sure it has been decided upon by the Council or the Council and European Parliament jointly. (Note that the site may also contain to other acts such as ‘Communications’, ‘Commission regulations’, and ‘Commission decisions’, but you should ignore these.)
Questions	Summarize the contents of the directive and the regulation based on the information provided. If necessary, look at the full text of the legislation (for which you can find a link at the bottom of the page). Compare the two pieces of legislation: is it clear to you why a directive was used in the one and a regulation in the other case? Make sure to pay attention to the level of detail. Which is more detailed, the regulation or the directive?

Links

Cambridge University Press