Análisis jurídico y lingüístico del derecho de la UE y de sus transposiciones: ¿un enfoque útil para explorar problemas de armonización?
| Autor | Elena Ruiz-Cortés |
| Cargo | FHEA, PhD of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada (Spain) |
| Páginas | 1-17 |
LEGAL-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF EU LAW AND ITS TRANSPOSITIONS: A
USEFUL APPROACH TO EXPLORE HARMONISATION PROBLEMS?
Elena Ruiz-Cortés*
ABSTRACT
The fact that the application of EU law leads to uneven practices across the Member States gives rise to heated debates
in the literature. Research tends to focus on how the constraints of the EU law-making process contribute to threatening
harmonisation in practice; however, the constraints of the transposition process are often overlooked. To bridge this gap,
here we will explore both the supranational and national factors that may threaten harmonisation, using a legal-linguistic
approach that will reveal the overlap between the legal and linguistic meanings in EU law. In particular, drawing on
Robertson’s notions of “horizontal and vertical viewpoints” (Robertson, 2012a), we will perform a horizontal legal-
linguistic analysis of Article 3(2) of the Spanish and English versions of Directive 2004/38/EC on freedom of movement
and residence, and a vertical legal-linguistic analysis of said Article in both language versions and its transposition
in Spain and in the UK. Our results suggest that, in our case-study, both EU law-making and transposition-related
factors may inuence EU harmonisation problems in practice; factors such as EU strategic ambiguity or indeterminacy,
political negotiations and supranational and national drafting decisions.
Keywords: EU law-making; transposition; Directive 2004/38/EC; legal-linguistic horizontal and vertical analysis;
harmonisation.
ANÀLISI JURÍDICA I LINGÜÍSTICA DEL DRET DE LA UE I DE LES SEVES
TRANSPOSICIONS: UN ENFOCAMENT ÚTIL PER EXPLORAR PROBLEMES
D’HARMONITZACIÓ?
Resum
El fet que l’aplicació del dret de la UE condueixi a pràctiques desiguals a tots els estats membres dóna lloc a debats
acalorats en la literatura. La investigació tendeix a centrar-se en com les limitacions del procés legislatiu de la UE
que contribueixen a una amenaçadora harmonització a la pràctica; tanmateix, sovint es passen per alt les restriccions
del procés de transposició. Per salvar aquesta bretxa, aquí explorem els factors nacionals i supranacionals que poden
amenaçar l’harmonització, mitjançant un enfocament jurídic i lingüístic que revela la superposició entre els signicats
jurídics i lingüístics del dret de la UE. En particular, basant-nos en les nocions de Robertson de “punts de vista
horitzontals i verticals” (Robertson, 2012a), fem una anàlisi jurídica i lingüística horitzontal de l’article 3 (2) de
les versions espanyola i anglesa de la Directiva 2004/38 / CE sobre llibertat de moviment i residència, i una anàlisi
jurídica i lingüística vertical d’aquest article en les dues versions lingüístiques i la seva transposició a Espanya i al
Regne Unit. Els nostres resultats suggereixen que, en el nostre estudi de cas, tant la legislació de la UE com els factors
relacionats amb la transposició poden inuir en els problemes d’harmonització de la UE a la pràctica; factors com
ara ambigüitat o indeterminació estratègica de la UE, negociacions polítiques i decisions de redacció supranacionals
i nacionals.
Paraules clau: legislació de la UE; transposició; Directiva 2004/38/CE; anàlisi jurídica i lingüística horitzontal i
vertical; harmonització.
∗ Elena Ruiz-Cortés, FHEA, PhD of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada (Spain), AVANTI
Research Group and ocial sworn translator and interpreter, eruizc@correo.ugr.es
Article received: 14.04.2020. Blind reviews: 08.05.2020 and 15.05.2020. Final version accepted: 05.11.2020.
Recommended citation: Ruiz-Cortés, Elena (2020). Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach
to Explore Harmonisation Problems? Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, 74, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.2436/
rld.i74.2020.3446
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 2
Summary
1 Introduction
2 The EU Law-making process
3 The transposition process
4 Legal-linguistic analyses from a horizontal and vertical viewpoint
4.1 Legal-linguistic horizontal analysis of Article 3(2) of the Spanish and English versions of Directive
2004/38/EC
4.1.1 En el país de procedencia – The country from which they have come
4.1.2 Miembro de la familia a cargo – Dependant/dependent
4.1.3 Pareja/Partner
4.2 Legal-linguistic vertical analysis of the Spanish and British transpositions of Article 3(2) of Directive
2004/38/EC
4.2.1 En el país de procedencia – The country from which they have come and their transpositions
4.2.2 Miembro de la familia a cargo – Dependant/dependent and their transpositions
4.2.3 Pareja/Partner in Article 3(2) and their transpositions
4.3 Discussion
4.3.1 EU law-making factors: drafting, translation and political negotiation
4.3.2 Transposition factors: what to keep, what to add and what to omit
4.3.3 Facilitating or hindering entry and residence?
5 Conclusions
References
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 3
1 Introduction
Given that uniform interpretation and application of EU law is a primary objective of EU legislative bodies
in order to ensure legal certainty across the EU, when divergent practices arise, they trigger understandable
debates concerning why this occurs. Previous research tends to focus on how the constraints of the EU law-
making process contribute to threatening harmonisation across the EU. However, surprisingly, these debates
barely address how transposition may inuence the harmonisation problems identied in practice, even
though this is a key stage in the implementation of an array of EU legal instruments.
Previous studies have shown that in order to address harmonisation problems not only do both the
supranational and national levels need to be considered; both the linguistic and legal dimensions of the
instruments involved need to be brought into the equation too (Font i Mas, 2017: 25-30). Thus, if we consider
“EU legislative texts as linguistic creations that lie within the eld of study of legal linguistics” (Robertson,
2010: 148), an approach that can explore the overlap between legal and linguistic meaning in EU law may
prove useful in identifying which factors may lead to harmonisation problems. Based on this logic, here
we contend that a legal-linguistic analysis of EU law and its transpositions will allow us to identify the
“paradoxes, compromises and tensions” arising from the intersection of language and law in the EU context
(Sosoni & Biel, 2018: 2) by revealing how the linguistic and legal dimensions of a given provision impact
on “the meanings that are created and acted upon in practice” (Robertson, 2018: 115). In other words, the
legal-linguistic approach proposed will allow us to analyse “practical legal-linguistic problems” (Font i Mas,
2017).
In this paper we will identify the abovementioned practical problems using Article 3(2) of Directive 2004/38/
EC on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory
of the Member States (hereinafter the Directive),1 and its Spanish and British transpositions as our case study
(see section 4). In Spain this Directive was transposed in Real Decreto 240/2007 (hereinafter RD 240/2007)
and in the UK in The Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2006.2 Apart from this legal-linguistic approach, we
will draw on Robertson’s notions of “horizontal and vertical viewpoints” (Robertson, 2012a) in order to
simultaneously view the Article analysed from both a horizontal and vertical viewpoint (Robertson, 2012a:
6) that reveals the interplay between the supranational and national instruments under study. Therefore, we
will perform a horizontal legal-linguistic analysis of Article 3(2) of the Spanish and English versions of
Directive 2004/38/EC and a subsequent vertical legal-linguistic analysis of the abovementioned Article in
those language versions and its transposition in Spain and in the UK.3
In this paper our goal is twofold. Firstly, we seek to identify some of the EU law-making and transposition-
related factors that may threaten harmonisation in our case study. And, secondly, we attempt to showcase
the usefulness of the horizontal and vertical legal-linguistic analysis proposed to identify them and, hence,
its practicality in exploring harmonisation problems in EU law by applying this model to Article 3(2) of
this Directive. Thus, in sections 2 and 3 we will describe the complexity that surrounds the EU law-making
process (section 2) and the transposition process of directives (section 3); which will be vital in understanding
the subsequent identication of the problematic elements in the analysis. Later, in section 4, we will present
our legal-linguistic horizontal and vertical analyses and our results will be discussed.4 Finally, in section 5,
our main conclusions will be presented.
1 This Directive is a relevant object of study since, although freedom of movement and residence is one of the cornerstones of Union
citizenship, obstacles to the right appear to persist in national contexts. See the report “Obstacles to the Right of Free Movement and
Residence for EU Citizens and their Families: Comparative Analysis (2016)” (hereinafter the 2016 Report).
2 The UK law currently in force is The Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016. The UK is subject to Directive
2004/38/EC until 1 January 2021.
3 Since studying the 24 language versions in this paper is impossible due to space limitations, we have chosen two language versions
that have proven to be problematic in institutional reports (see the 2016 Report), although we recognise the need to expand the
analysis to other language versions in the future.
4 In Ruiz-Cortés (2019a) we performed a succinct vertical analysis of Article 5.2. of this Directive and its British transposition. In
this paper we seek to go one step further, performing both a horizontal and a vertical analysis that allows us to compare two language
versions and two dierent transposition measures.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 4
2 The EU Law-making process5
In order to describe the EU law-making process, we will focus on what Robertson (2018: 116) calls
“procedural aspects” with the aim of determining how the processes by which EU texts are produced impact
on the language versions studied.
Almost all EU legislation starts life as a proposal from the Commission. As argued by Robinson (2014: 249),
the proposal “is a complete, fully worked out draft text of an act” by the competent Directorate General (DG)
for the eld in question. Robinson (2014: 255) also contends:
The rst drafts are generally produced by technical experts in the department responsible. […] They are not
specialists in legislative drafting and generally have had little or no drafting training. […] Almost all rst
drafts […] now have to be produced in English. It is a real challenge for technical experts to have to draft
complex texts in a language which is not their mother tongue.
Currently English is the de facto lingua franca (Felici, 2015) of EU legislation, although the original
lingua franca was French.6 In this context, the lingua franca is used mostly by non-native speakers (Felici,
2015: 124) in a multilingual context or by native speakers that lose touch with their native language in this
multilingual context (Felici 2015: 124). Thus, the above may have linguistic implications that should be
taken into consideration, as suggested by Frame (2005: 21) below:
The result is that the raw document produced by the originating department in the Commission will in most
cases display a reasonably good standard of English [lingua franca] but there will be errors of style and
vocabulary, and many other imperfections in need of tidying up.
At this stage dierent bodies within the DG in question are consulted, including the Legal Service:
In the team responsible for the quality of legislation lawyers specialising in drafting, known as legal revisers,
check whether the text is well drafted, clear and precise and in accordance with the various drafting rules.
[…] While at this stage the draft exists in just one language, almost always English, the legal revisers also
seek to ensure that the draft will be capable of being translated into all the other ocial languages (Robinson,
2014: 259).
Furthermore, all the above should be approached considering the drafting guidelines applicable:7
EU law is a legal order in its own right, with its own drafting standards and conventions. Consequently, EU
legislation should comply with these rules. In other words, it should look and read like EU law, irrespective
of whether the drafting conventions of EU law correspond to the dierent drafting conventions of the national
legal order (Strandvik, 2013).
However, while these guidelines are vital to improve clarity and transparency, at times using them is not an
easy task for the actors involved in the law-making process. In other words, the guidelines are not always
straightforward themselves (Strandvik, 2018), which may also inuence the production of the legislative
text. Consequently, the elaboration of the proposal could be described as a multistage collaborative process
in which a variety of actors share the responsibility of producing a legislative proposal—both using a lingua
franca (Felici, 2015) and complying with the institutional drafting guidelines (Strandvik, 2013)—that (in
theory) results in a clear and unambiguous legislative text for its subsequent (and reiterated) translation.
When the proposal is completed, it is sent to the Directorate General for Translation (DGT).8 The “unique”
EU policy of language equality (Šarčević, 2018: 10) presupposes accessing legislation in the 24 ocial
5 The description that follows does not claim to be exhaustive, but instead seeks to present the main actors and processes involved
in the EU law-making process.
6 There is no consensus on the date this change took place. It seems to be connected with the 2004 enlargement, which may imply
that the lingua franca of our Directive was in fact French.
7 “EU legal acts should comply with drafting rules, formalized formulations and templates in the Joint Practical Guide (JPG), the
Manual for Precedents, the Joint Handbook for the Presentation and Drafting of Acts Subject to the Ordinary Legislative Procedure
and the Interinstitutional Style Guide” (Strandvik, 2018: 53). We will use the JPG in our analysis.
8 Not all EU texts are translated in-house, although genres such as legislation are more likely not to be outsourced. However,
Strandvik (2018: 53) highlights that the recent outsourcing increase has aected “rst […] ‘less important’ documents but gradually
also […] policy documents and legislation”.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 5
languages of the EU. This entails that all legal instruments need to be drafted in 24 equally-authentic language
versions, which in practice, for 23 of them, means translated into. Even though this policy “guarantees the
equality of EU citizens before the law and prevents linguistic disenfranchisement” (Biel, 2014: 60), while
situating translation as “the predominant means of producing multilingual legal instruments” (Prieto Ramos,
2014: 313) in the EU context, it also poses several practical obstacles for EU translators. In other words,
this language policy entails that all languages versions are supposed to have the same meaning (known as
the principle of equal authenticity), therefore the EU translator’s main task “is to preserve the unity of the
single instrument with the ultimate aim of promoting its uniform interpretation and application in practice”
(Šarčević, 2018: 13). This notion of equivalence has been largely contested in the literature (Biel, 2014;
Pozzo, 2014) with several experts considering equivalence in this context simply a “myth” or a “chimera”
(Pozzo, 2014: 38). In the end, as rightly argued by Šarčević (2000: n.p.): “While it is generally acknowledged
that translators cannot be expected to produce parallel texts that are equal in meaning, they are expected to
create texts that are equal in legal eect”. In any event, once the translations are nished, the 24 language
versions are sent to the Council and the Parliament for scrutiny, negotiation and amendments.
When the language versions reach the Council and the Parliament the negotiation process begins (see
Robinson, 2014). In the negotiation process dierent legal tactics are used, such as ambiguity or vagueness
(Robinson, 2005: 7; Prieto Ramos, 2014: 321-322) either to show a political agreement has been reached or
to show the inability to reach one. According to Frame (2005: 23) at this stage:
Member States’ representatives often make changes for political reasons which override linguistic
considerations. Particularly in the case of directives, Member States often prefer ambiguity to clarity since
this enables them to implement a measure in a way that suits their domestic agenda.
Robinson (2005: 8) wonders if the lack of clarity and precision resulting from this process may not be just
“unfortunate side eects but an essential aspect that enables the system to work by giving the Member States
the leeway they need to adapt it to their own legal systems”. However, as Robinson underscores (ibid.):
“Whatever the answer, the acknowledged need for some leeway or ‘wriggle room’ cannot be treated as
licence to be sloppy”. In the negotiation process competing interests of the dierent stakeholders collide,
which means that these interests need to be debated and negotiated to produce an instrument that can be
ratied by all of them. In procedural terms this means that an instrument goes through several amendments,
and hence drafting, as well as reiterated translations, since “the drafting of EU legislation and its translation
often take place concurrently and are intertwined” (Biel, 2014: 67). In this multistage and multilingual
drafting process lawyer-linguists, both of the Council and the Parliament, play a vital role since they have
“the twofold task of checking the drafting of the nal versions of legal texts produced by their respective
institutions and ensuring that all the language versions corresponded” (Robinson 2014: 268-269).
Once a compromise is reached—after long negotiations and contested amendments—the Parliament and the
Council adopt the nal versions. After undertaking the Herculean task of producing 24 equally-authentic
language versions whose success is determined by producing harmonised legal eects across the EU, the
EU law-making process ends with the authentication of translations as language versions of equal force by
publication in the Ocial Journal.
3 The transposition process
After the language versions are published in the Ocial Journal, the Member States are required to transpose
the directive in question into national law. As rightly explained by Prechal (1995: 5), transposition can be
dened as the: “Process of transforming directives into provisions of national law by the competent national
legislative body or bodies”. Consequently, the national legislator needs to transpose the provisions correctly
while making them eective in the specic legal culture of the Member State in question. This process is far
from simple and it is organised dierently depending on the Member State’s standpoint. In the case in point,
the British government makes online information available concerning the transposition of directives in the
UK, and provides the actors involved with a guide on how to transpose called “Transposition guidance: how
to implement EU Directives into UK law eectively”9 (hereinafter TGUK, 2018). Clear instructions can be
9 See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/implementing-eu-directives-into-uk-law.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 6
found in this guide, while it also prescribes the two main transposition approaches that may be used: copy-
out, i.e. adopting the same wording as that of the Directive, or elaboration, i.e. using language that diers
from the wording of the Directive (TGUK, 2018: 11). On the other hand, the Spanish authorities do not
provide any guidance, as criticised by Spanish legal professionals,10 and there is some obscurity surrounding
how the process actually works. As for the transposition process itself, as Robertson (2011: 63) highlights:
Transposition implies: rst, analysing the directive, interpreting it, understanding the intentions, objectives
and methods, deconstructing it, discarding purely EU elements […]; second, making an analysis of national
law point by point for each element in the directive and identifying whether the obligation is already respected
or requires new national laws and if so what; third, constructing national texts within the national legislative
framework in accordance with national rules on drafting (intertextually) in order to implement the EU policy.
In Robertson’s words (2012b: 28): “The implication is that national law drafters are translators as well as
interpreters and drafters”. As for the transposition of our Directive in Spain and in the UK, the aforementioned
2016 Report on obstacles to the right to freedom of movement and residence points out that several
transposition problems persist in both countries, some of which will be addressed in the following section.
4 Legal-linguistic analyses from a horizontal and vertical viewpoint
In this section we will perform our legal-linguistic analysis drawing on Robertson’s notions of “horizontal
and vertical viewpoints” (Robertson, 2012a: 6):
We can express the relationships between and within languages in spatial terms. If we imagine all the language
versions laid out side by side like soldiers in an army marching in step, text by text, article by article, sentence
by sentence, term by term, then we can look across the texts horizontally, as it were, and ask if they all march
in step and whether the information contained in each unit of meaning is the same across all the language
versions. We can call this a ‘horizontal’ view. On the other hand, we can step inside any language version and
consider it exclusively from the point of view of being one text in a sea of other legal texts expressed in that
same language code (English, French, German, etc.). Then we look for consistency between the texts within
the same language. We can call this a ‘vertical’ dimension.
Considering that the 2016 Report suggests that implementation obstacles to this right seem to persist,
especially in the case of family members of EU nationals, we will study an article that regulates their right
to freedom of movement and residence. In particular, under Articles 2 and 3 of this Directive, third-country
family members of EU nationals are entitled to the right to freedom of movement and residence across the EU.
Specically, while Article 2 of the Directive only refers to direct family members (such as spouses, children
and dependent parents), Article 3 refers to all other cases of family members entitled to this right commonly
known as extended family members. After a prior in-depth study of the Directive and its transpositions
(Ruiz-Cortés, 2020: 270-341), we have specically chosen Article 3(2) to be presented in this paper since
this particular Article and its transpositions will allow us to illustrate dierent ways in which EU law-making
and the transposition processes impact on the legislation studied simultaneously.11 In Table 1 the horizontal
comparison of Article 3(2) in the Spanish and the English versions of Directive 2004/38/EC and the vertical
comparison of said language versions and the Spanish and British transpositions are presented. The elements
subsequently analysed are highlighted in bold:
10 See the Report by the Council of State on the integration of European law into the Spanish legal system (2008).
11 Our prior analysis showed that problems related to other Articles of this Directive are solely linked to supranational or national
factors, but not to both at the same time. Thus, we believe that the analysis of Article 3(2) is relevant to our study since it shows how
both supranational and national factors impact on the application of the same provision in practice.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 7
DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC - ARTICLE 3(2)
Spanish version English version
2. Sin perjuicio del derecho personal de los
interesados a la libre circulación y a la residencia,
el Estado miembro de acogida facilitará, de
conformidad con su legislación nacional, la
entrada y la residencia de las siguientes personas:
2. Without prejudice to any right to free movement and
residence the persons concerned may have in their own
right, the host Member State shall, in accordance with
its national legislation, facilitate entry and residence for
the following persons:
a) cualquier otro miembro de la familia, sea cual
fuere su nacionalidad, que no entre en la denición
del punto 2 del artículo 2 que, en el país de
procedencia, esté a cargo o viva con el ciudadano
de la Unión beneciario del derecho de residencia
con carácter principal, o […]
(a) any other family members, irrespective of their
nationality, not falling under the denition in point 2 of
Article 2 who, in the country from which they have
come, are dependants or members of the household of
the Union citizen having the primary right of residence,
or […]
b) La pareja con la que el ciudadano de la Unión
mantiene una relación estable, debidamente
probada. […]
(b) the partner with whom the Union citizen has a
durable relationship, duly attested. […]
SPANISH AND BRITISH TRANSPOSITIONS OF ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
RD 240/2007- Artículo 2.bis.1. a) y b) Otros
familiares
The Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016 - Section 8
-“Extended family member”
a) Los miembros de su familia, cualquiera que
sea su nacionalidad, no incluidos en el artículo
2 del presente real decreto, que acompañen o se
reúnan con él y acrediten de forma fehaciente en
el momento de la solicitud que se encuentran en
alguna de las siguientes circunstancias:
1.º Que, en el país de procedencia, estén a su
cargo o vivan con él. […]
(2) The condition in this paragraph is that the person
is—
(a) a relative of an EEA national; and
(b) residing in a country other than the United
Kingdom and is dependent upon the EEA national
or is a member of the EEA national’s household; and
either— […]
b) La pareja de hecho con la que mantenga una
relación estable debidamente probada, de acuerdo
con el criterio establecido en el apartado 4.b) de
este artículo
(5) The condition in this paragraph is that the person
is the partner (other than a civil partner) of, and in a
durable relationship with, an EEA national, and is able
to prove this to the decision maker.
Table 1. Horizontal and vertical comparisons.
Taking Table 1 as the starting point, rstly, we will delve into our horizontal analysis and, subsequently, into
our vertical analysis.
4.1 Legal-linguistic horizontal analysis of Article 3(2) of the Spanish and English versions of
Directive 2004/38/EC
The rst aspect that stands out when comparing the versions is their “surface-level similarity” (Šarčević,
2018), which derives from what Robertson (2011, 2012a) coined as the “synoptic approach”:
From the point of view of controlling meaning across languages, in EU legislation one can note the adoption
of a ‘synoptic approach’. This implies using structures and methods which compartmentalise texts, dividing
them into segments of meaning so that the ‘same’ (or ‘equivalent’) information in each language is conveyed
on the same page number, in the same article number, in the same paragraph, and in the same sentence, down
to the lowest level of unit. This ‘synoptic approach’ facilitates the shared legal-linguistic revision (Pacho
Aljanati, 2017: 78).
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 8
As can be observed in Table 1, the synoptic approach is adopted in the section studied. In particular,
punctuation is used to divide the text into segments of meaning with the same or equivalent information
(Pacho Aljanati, 2017: 78) in each paragraph of the section. These versions also have an evident syntactic,
terminological and structural similarity, even though the Spanish and English styles are maintained (note
the use of punctuation and capitals). Verbatim reproductions can also be observed throughout both language
versions of this Directive in phrases such as Sin perjuicio de/Without prejudice to, or even in complete
sentences such as in the example below:
Facilitará, de conformidad con su legislación nacional,
la entrada y la residencia de las siguientes personas:
Shall, in accordance with its national legislation, facilitate
entry and residence for the following persons:
Table 2. Verbatim reproductions.
This would ratify “the belief that interlingual concordance promotes uniform interpretation” (Šarčević, 2018:
14), even if, at times, it results in slightly unnatural renderings (such as separating shall and facilitate in the
English version above). One should also note the compliance with provision 2.3.2. of the Joint Practical
Guide (JPG) in the use of the future (specically the futuro legislativo) in Spanish and the auxiliary shall in
English to convey general obligations. The abovementioned general obligation at the beginning of Article
3(2) is of utmost importance in terms of freedom of movement and residence since, as suggested by the
Report (2016: 28): “Incorrect transposition of this provision could result in specic conditions not provided
in the Directive for TCN [Third Country National] family members to obtain the right of residence”. Bearing
this in mind, below we will rst analyse how the EU law-making process inuences specic terms, phrases
and sentences with relevant legal-linguistic implications from a horizontal viewpoint. This prior analysis will
allow us to subsequently examine how the supranational elements highlighted have been transposed in our
vertical analysis (section 4.2.). Lastly, in the light of our ndings, we will assess if freedom of movement is
in fact “facilitated” to these family members in our discussion (section 4.3).
4.1.1 En el país de procedencia – The country from which they have come
In this extract from the second paragraph of Article 3(2), a dierent strategy has been used to express the
same idea in these versions: while in Spanish a phrase has been used, in English they have opted for a
sentence. It should be noted that the Spanish version is a verbatim reproduction of the French version (dans
le pays de provenance), which may be interpreted either as a coincidence or as an indicator of French being
the lingua franca used in this case. From an interpretative stance, choosing procedencia in Spanish and from
which they have come in English may lead to ambiguities and dierent interpretations by national actors in
the transposition process. On the one hand, in the Spanish version, the use of proceder referring to people
may be interpreted dierently (see Dengler, 2010: 87). It may either mean the origin of a person (country of
nationality) or a country that the person in question is coming from, but not necessarily the country of origin.
On the other hand, English native speakers have diverging opinions on the English phrase, since while some
argue that there is no ambiguity (considering that to come from, which implies nationality, is not the same
as from which they have come, which implies coming from a country which is not necessarily the country
of origin), others contend that the same ambiguity present in Spanish applies to the English version. In our
vertical analysis, we will reveal how national authorities have interpreted this in the transposition process.
4.1.2 Miembro de la familia a cargo – Dependant/dependent
This term is an indeterminate legal concept, which is “emblematic of EU law” (Bajčić, 2017: 41) and is
applicable to dierent kinds of family members in the Directive. From a terminological stance, it is noticeable
that the term used at EU level is the same as the one used in the national immigration law system in both
cases. This may be justiable given its indeterminacy and, in principle, it is not problematic since it will be
specically interpreted depending on the family member to whom the term is applicable.12 This indeterminacy
also explains why there is no denition of the term, which leads us to think that this is a deliberate strategic
ambiguity. However, in general, the lack of denitions is not a trivial problem in EU law as pointed out by
Pozzo (2014: 39):
12 However, it may be a problem when terms which are too specic to a particular language or national legal system are used, since
they may limit the interpretation of the term in the EU context. This is why the JPG (5.3) recommends avoiding this.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 9
One of the problems which need highlighting arises from the lack of denitions13 for legal terms in directives,
which then are given dierent meanings in the various national systems. Similar problems, relating to the
diculty in achieving a harmonised result, can be met in cases where the Community draftsmen opt for a
deliberately non-technical denition.
This is why the JPG (14) recommends that, in cases of ambiguity, a denition needs to be provided. In Article
3(2) we nd an example of a term, Estado miembro de acogida/Host Member State, that has been dened in
another part of the Directive—Article 2(3)—although this obviously responds to the need to dene this key
term. However, not many denitions are found in this instrument (Ruiz-Cortés, 2020). This makes the case
of recursos sucientes/sucient resources14 worth mentioning, although the term is present in Article 8(4).
As can be observed below, in both language versions, an EU term was created for it, and a denition was
also provided:
Spanish version English version
EU term (Directive) Recursos sucientes Sucient resources
National term in immigration
law in Spain and in the UK
Medios económicos sucientes Sucient funds
Table 3. Recursos sucientes and sucient resources.
From a terminological stance, the EU terms used in the Spanish and English versions are verbatim
reproductions of the French (ressources susantes)—or the French and Spanish of the English if the latter
is considered the lingua franca.15 Regardless of this, the strategy used with this term in the drafting process
(clarifying that this is an EU concept/term) has a clear implication in the transposition process: national
actors will understand that it diers from the one used, if any, in their national immigration law. We will then
see what occurs with dependant as an indeterminate legal concept in the transpositions.
4.1.3 Pareja/Partner
Partner is undoubtedly one of the essential terms in this Directive. To understand its relevance, it is vital
to locate the specic political context in which this instrument was shaped. At the time when the Directive
was created, between 2001 and 2004, the recognition of the condition of partner in terms of freedom of
movement by EU law was pivotal. Directive 2004/38/EC intended to acknowledge the evolution of family
models, models that are now common in the vast majority of Member States, but were not at the time. Marín
Corsanau (2017: 425) argues that, given the divergent conceptions of the family in Member States at the
time, this was not exactly an undisputed issue in the process of negotiating the Directive. Heated debates and
compromises can be traced back to the text if we analyse the changes that the original proposal suered in the
negotiation process (ibid.), which means that negotiation was central to the nal formulation of this concept.
Two kinds of partners can be found in the Directive; one regulated in Article 2 and the other regulated in
Article 3 (which we are studying here). The dierences between them are complex, although dierent legal
scholars have strived to clarify them (Marín Corsanau, 2017; Soto Moya, 2018). Broadly speaking, it can be
argued that their main dierence is related to the way in which the condition of partner is proved. While in
Article 2 the relationship needs to be proved by being registered as partners, in Article 3 it may be proved
by other means (Recio Juárez, 2016: 116). Now, shifting the focus to the terms used to express these two
concepts, we nd:
Kind of partners according
to Article 7(4) of Directive
2004/38/EC16
Spanish version English version
Article 2(2) b) Pareja registrada Registered partner
13 Both emphases appear in the original version.
14 Member States shall grant the right of residence to nationals of Member States and to members of their families, provided that
they are covered by sickness insurance and have sucient resources to avoid becoming a burden on the social assistance system of
the host Member State.
15 However, other versions have opted for a slightly dierent term (see the Italian risorse economiche sucienti).
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 10
Kind of partners according
to Article 7(4) of Directive
2004/38/EC16
Spanish version English version
Article 3(2) b) Pareja de hecho registrada Registered partner
Table 4. Pareja and Partner in Articles 2 and 3. Directive 2004/38/EC16
Several aspects are worth mentioning here. Firstly, while the Spanish version uses dierent terms for two
dierent concepts, the English version contravenes formal consistency (point 6.2. of the JPG) by using the
same term to express two dierent concepts. Secondly, it is revealing that in both language versions the
common denominator between the terms used for these two concepts is precisely the fact that these citizens
are registered as partners, which according to experts appears to be their main dierence (Recio Juárez,
2016; Soto Moya, 2018). And thirdly, these facts call into question the extent to which these terms, derived
from the negotiation process (Marín Corsanau, 2017: 425), are conducive to their desired regulatory eects
in the national contexts: recognising divergent situations of partners across the EU. We hope to shed more
light on this in our vertical analysis.
4.2 Legal-linguistic vertical analysis of the Spanish and British transpositions of Article 3(2) of
Directive 2004/38/EC
In this section we will unravel how the elements identied in section 4.1. were transposed in the Spanish and
British transposition laws. Generally, if we compare the language versions and their transpositions, it seems
that the Spanish transposition has opted for a “copy out” approach with wording closer to the Directive, while
the British transposition has opted for the “elaboration approach”, since more information has been included
(TGUK, 2018: 11). It should be noted that it was not until 2015 that Spanish law correctly transposed Article
3(2) of the Directive17 in Article 2 bis of RD 240/2007; and although the British authorities transposed it at
once, some amendments have been made, as highlighted in the subsequent analysis.
4.2.1 En el país de procedencia – The country from which they have come and their transpositions
ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
Spanish version English version
En el país de procedencia The country from which they have come
SPANISH AND BRITISH TRANSPOSITIONS OF ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
RD 240/2007- Artículo 2 bis 1 a) 1.º The Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016-Section
8 2(b)
En el país de procedencia
*At the end of RD 240/2007 they clarify: país de
origen o procedencia.
Residing in a country other than the United Kingdom.
*This was not the rst interpretation but an amended
version. In the rst version of this law this was
transposed as “the person is residing in an EEA State
in which the EEA national also resides”.
Table 5. En el país de procedencia – The country from which they have come and their transpositions.
Observing the transpositions, it could be argued that this segment was ambiguous for both national authorities.
This ambiguity was solved in RD 240/2007 by clarifying that the country referred to in the Directive was both
the country of origin and non-origin. However, at the same time, this vagueness allowed the UK authorities
to transpose this section restrictively in the initial transposition as “The person is residing in an EEA State
16 Article 7(4) refers to both partners as follows: “By way of derogation from paragraphs 1(d) and 2 above, only the spouse, the
registered partner provided for in Article 2(2)(b) and dependent children shall have the right of residence as family members of a
Union citizen meeting the conditions under 1(c) above. Article 3(2) shall apply to his/her dependent direct relatives in the ascending
lines and those of his/her spouse or registered partner”.
17 Real Decreto 987/2015, de 30 de octubre, por el que se modica el Real Decreto 240/2007, de 16 de febrero, sobre entrada,
libre circulación y residencia en España de ciudadanos de los Estados miembros de la Unión Europea y de otros Estados parte en el
Acuerdo sobre el Espacio Económico Europeo.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 11
in which the EEA national also resides”, making the right of residence of these family members conditional
upon their prior lawful residence in another Member State. This approach was found to be contrary to the
Directive by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Metock ruling18 and forced the UK to change
the wording to the more general and accurate “Residing in a country other than the United Kingdom”.
4.2.2 Miembro de la familia a cargo – Dependant/dependent and their transpositions
ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
Spanish version English version
Familiares a cargo / estén a cargo Dependant / dependent
SPANISH AND BRITISH TRANSPOSITIONS OF ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
RD 240/2007- Artículo 2 bis 1 a) 1.º The Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016- Section 8 2(b)
Estén/ vivan a su cargo (del ciudadano comunitario) Dependant / dependent
Table 6. Miembro de la familia a cargo – Dependant/dependent and their transpositions.
In this case, since this is an indeterminate legal concept (Bajčić, 2017: 41), the wording of both transpositions
is exactly the same as the Directive. Once again this was foreseeable given its indeterminacy, since it could
be specically interpreted depending on the family member to whom the term is applicable. However, this
discretion seems to have created some inequalities in practice, especially in those States where “the criteria
of what constitutes ‘dependency’ is non-existent. In those States, the transposing measure gives leeway to
the national authorities to apply very dierent interpretations of the term” (Report, 2016: 42). On the one
hand, no reference has been made to the term in the UK transposition, however at the administrative level it
establishes that “‘Dependent’ means that you need the nancial help of your sponsor to meet your essential
needs”.19 On the other hand, Article 2.bis 4a) of the Spanish transposition states that “the degree of nancial
or physical dependence of the family member will be considered”. Thus, it could be argued that, given
the discretion granted, both national authorities have chosen not to include a denition of the term in the
transposition. However, the statement in Article 2.bis 4a) of the Spanish transposition, and the administrative
denition of the term in the UK, seem to suggest a dierent understanding of the scope of the term. While in
Spain it appears not to be connected only to nancial matters, in the UK this seems to be the case.
4.2.3 Pareja/Partner in Article 3(2) and their transpositions
ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
Spanish version English version
La pareja con la que el ciudadano de la Unión
mantiene una relación estable, debidamente
probada./ Pareja de hecho registrada -Article 7 (4)
The partner with whom the Union citizen has a
durable relationship, duly attested./ Registered
partner Article 7 (4)
SPANISH AND BRITISH TRANSPOSITIONS OF ARTICLE 3(2) OF DIRECTIVE 2004/38/EC
RD 240/2007 Artículo 2 bis. 1.b) The Immigration (EEA) Regulations
2016-Section 8 (5)
b) La pareja de hecho con la que mantenga una
relación estable debidamente probada, de acuerdo
con el criterio establecido en el apartado 4.b) de
este artículo.
(5) The condition in this paragraph is that the person
is the partner (other than a civil partner) of, and in a
durable relationship with, an EEA national, and is
able to prove this to the decision maker.
Table 7. Pareja/ Partner in Article 3(2).
As can be observed, a dierent strategy has been followed to transpose this key term into Spanish and British
legislation. On the one hand, Spanish authorities have opted for “pareja de hecho” (similar to the terminology
used in Article 7(4) of the Directive) while the British authorities have dened this partner by opposing it
to “civil partner”, given that “civil partner” is the transposed term for “the registered partner” regulated in
18 Case C-127/08 Metock [2008]. See: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=es&num=C-127/08.
19 See: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/le/786258/eea_fm_-03-19.pdf.
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 12
Article 2(2) of Directive 2004/38/EC. Broadly speaking, in Spain, before the inclusion of Article 2 bis in
the RD 240/2007, only partners who were registered were considered partners under EU law. This practical
application could be linked to the fact that, in the Directive, the fact that these family members were registered
was the common denominator between partners in Article 2 and Article 3 (section 4.1.3), which could have
led to the non-transposition of this case and, hence, to a restrictive application in the initial transposition
measure. On the other hand, although in the UK the term was transposed correctly, the British authorities
also restricted freedom of movement with the restrictive transposition of “The country from which they have
come” (section 4.1.1). As for the “relación estable debidamente probada” or the “durable relationship, duly
attested” of these partners, while Spanish law prescribed what it meant in the 2015 amendment of the RD
240/2007 in Article 2bis, UK law generally stated that these family members must be able “to prove this
[the relationship] to the decision maker”. This implies that the nal decision will be in the hands of the
immigration ocers at the administrative level (Ruiz-Cortés, 2019b).
4.3 Discussion
In the light of our exploratory ndings, it could be argued that both EU law-making and transposition-related
factors appear to pose a threat to harmonisation in our case study, as summarised below.
4.3.1 EU law-making factors: drafting, translation and political negotiation
Several EU law-making factors appear to be linked to harmonisation problems in the case presented
throughout section 4. It is worth starting with the impact of the lingua franca on the language versions
studied. As highlighted in section 2, we believe that in the case of this Directive, the lingua franca is French.20
On that understanding, it could be argued that this lingua franca has inuenced the ambiguous verbatim
reproduction país de procedencia in the Spanish language version, following the pays de provenance of the
French language version (4.1.1). However, interestingly, even if a diverging translation decision has been
adopted in the English version, turning this phrase into a sentence (the country from which they have come),
it has also resulted in ambiguity; reinforcing our belief that this is a case of EU strategic ambiguity. It is also
worth mentioning the case of dependant (4.1.2). In this case, the EU drafting decisions to use the Spanish
and British immigration law terms in the Directive, and not to provide a denition in the EU instrument,
indicate that this is deliberate EU indeterminacy. However, said indeterminacy has resulted in divergent
applications of dependant across the EU, as highlighted in the following section. Lastly, regarding partners,
it is relevant to note that while the drafting decision to keep “registered” for both partners in the English
and Spanish versions has only led to transposition problems in Spain (4.1.3); the contravention of formal
consistency, only present in the English version (4.1.3), has not resulted in a transposition problem in the UK
(4.2.3). Regardless of this, it seems clear that the formulation of partners in this EU instrument is a product
of political negotiation within the Union due to a lack of common family models (4.1.3), just as other related
terms in this Directive were, such as spouse.21
Broadly, our ndings also show the general surface-level similarity (Šarčević, 2018) between the language
versions studied and how the synoptic approach (Robertson, 2012a) is applied for this purpose (4.1).
However, despite this general surface-level similarity throughout both language versions, it seems clear that
interlingual concordance does not always result in uniform interpretation and application of EU law, as will
be highlighted below.
4.3.2 Transposition factors: what to keep, what to add and what to omit
In our analyses it was also apparent that some transposition-related factors could be impacting negatively on
harmonisation in the context studied. The rst relevant decision to analyse is the general approach used by
these Member States when transposing this Directive. Our results in this case study suggest that, generally,
dierent transposition approaches have been used by these countries. While Spain seems to have favoured
the copy-out approach, the UK appears to have generally favoured the elaboration approach. However, as can
20 This could also be inferred from our ndings in an in-depth study of this Directive (Ruiz-Cortés, 2020). Therefore, throughout this
section, we will work with the premise that French is the lingua franca.
21 For further discussion see Ruiz-Cortés (2020: 279-281).
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 13
be expected, both countries have used both approaches throughout the Directive.22 Obviously, the elaboration
approach, which allows for the rewording of what the Directive prescribes, gives more leeway to transpose a
given provision into national legislation. However, our results suggest that, at times, both the UK and Spain
have used this approach to restrict citizens’ rights. On the one hand, the UK transposed the country from
which they have come restrictively by adding information which was not present in the Directive (4.2.1).
On the other hand, Spain restricted the transposition of partners under Article 3 of the Directive by omitting
information in the Spanish transposition (4.2.3). Whatever the case, the end result is that, by adding or
omitting, both transposition decisions have caused harmonisation problems in practice. Likewise, in the case
of dependant, the Spanish and British authorities’ transposition decisions have also impacted on the national
application of the term. While the UK legislators decided not to make any clarications of this term by
keeping the term undened, the Spanish legislators included some clarications to specify how dependency
should be understood in terms of EU freedom of movement in Spain (4.2.2). As conrmed by the 2016
Report, this has led to dierent applications of this term at national level, due to dierent understandings of
what it entails. These dierent interpretations are permitted, given the leeway required in the transposition
process, which entails that harmonisation of transpositions is both a necessity and a contradiction in itself.
So how do we strike the balance? Possibly, the red line is crossed when these divergent interpretations
restrict citizens’ rights, as the 2016 Report (42) suggests is occurring across Member States in the case of
dependency.
4.3.3 Facilitating or hindering entry and residence?
Bearing all of the above in mind, the question that remains unanswered is: is entry and residence of these
family members facilitated in the British and the Spanish contexts in compliance with the general obligation
(facilitará/shall facilitate) prescribed in the Directive? In the light of our ndings, even if the “practical
legal-linguistic problems” (Font i Mas, 2017) identied appear to be connected with practical harmonisation
problems that occasionally impede said facilitation in both countries (Report, 2016: 41-50), in general, Spain
has been more exible in facilitating them than the UK.23 This in turn entails that, given the current Brexit
situation, these ndings have broader implications beyond just harmonisation. In other words, our ndings
appear to suggest that the UK has had a restrictive approach towards EU immigration over time, even before
Brexit was in the picture. Undeniably, this restrictive implementation of EU freedom of movement appears
to be connected with the pro-Brexit trend in UK public discourse that depicts EU freedom of movement as an
abuse that only benets EU citizens, while being detrimental to British citizens. However, our ndings appear
to reject the aforementioned trend, showing that the UK has strived to restrict EU migration since the initial
transposition process in 2006 and not as a result of it being an “abuse”. Furthermore, as highlighted by Marin
Corsanau (2019: 279), those who argue that EU freedom of movement promotes reverse discrimination of
British citizens conveniently forget to acknowledge that it was the UK authorities who decided not to benet
their own nationals in terms of freedom of movement in their transposition, as, for instance, Spain did.24
Whatever the case, this decision by the UK authorities is indeed symbolic, since together with the ndings
above, it shows that favouring EU freedom of movement has not been a priority for the UK authorities for
a long time.
In short, in section 4 we have addressed “practical legal-linguistic problems” (Font i Mas, 2017) that appear
to threaten the achievement of harmonised results in the application of the right of freedom of movement
in the countries involved. Our analyses have ultimately allowed us not only to draw theoretical conclusions
about how the characteristics of EU law and its transpositions may impact on harmonisation, but more
importantly, to showcase this by analysing authentic legal instruments that impact on citizens’ lives.
22 For further discussion see Ruiz-Cortés (2020: 278-286, 306-312).
23 This could be inferred from the Spanish clarication of what the “the country from which they have come” means or the more
exible Spanish interpretation of the scope of “dependent”.
24 For further discussion see Marín Corsanau (2019).
Elena Ruiz-Cortés
Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 14
5 Conclusions
Harmonised EU laws extend across dierent jurisdictions and elds of law, which justies exploring which
factors may hinder achieving harmonised legal eects across the EU. The case study presented above has
initially attempted to do so, and even if it shows neither exhaustive nor denite ndings, it certainly provides
us with data that may be relevant to future studies.
On the one hand, our case study corroborates that an array of supranational and national procedural factors
may impact on harmonisation problems in the EU context (our rst goal). This has two relevant implications
for future studies: (1) that reductionist approaches, such as systematically blaming EU translators (Frame,
2005), should be avoided when addressing this matter, and (2) that transposition-related aspects should not
fade into the background compared to EU law-making aspects when studying harmonisation. On the other
hand, our case study also illustrates the convenience of the horizontal and vertical legal-linguistic analysis
proposed to identify the factors that may pose a threat to harmonisation (our second goal). This entails that,
in the future, further collaboration between researchers, from both a linguistic and a legal background (and
from both the EU law-making and transposition processes), will be benecial when addressing harmonisation
matters. Undeniably, our initial ndings also pave the way for related lines of research to be pursued in
the future, some of which may be: (1) to explore the extent to which the problems that lead to a lack of
harmonisation are common to the EU ocial languages; (2) to analyse the extent to which the problematic
elements identied are present in directives in other policy elds; (3) to address how our ndings may impact
on other EU instruments that regulate a number of private law situations with cross-border repercussions,
such as Regulations 2016/1103 and 2016/1104 (Gómez Urrutia, 2017; Rodríguez Benot, 2019); or (4) to
examine the impact of the administrative application of EU law on harmonisation problems.25
In conclusion, since EU law currently “aects most areas of the citizens’ daily lives” (Strandvik, 2018: 52)
exploring harmonisation problems in practice is indispensable to actually determine how citizens exercise
their rights. The right to move and reside freely across the EU is a clear example, since despite being one of the
cornerstones of Union citizenship, harmonisation problems result in citizens exercising this right unequally
based on the State in which they intend to reside. Therefore, our results suggest that the implementation of
freedom of movement and residence appears to remain a challenge in the EU context and that, currently, the
severe consequences of the abovementioned unequal treatment are suered by an already vulnerable group
of society, i.e. migrants. These facts call for future studies to foreground the need to strengthen this right, at
least if we seek to work towards a real EU integration policy that guarantees that citizens may exercise their
right to freedom of movement and residence on an equal footing.
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Legal-linguistic Analysis of EU Law and its Transpositions: a Useful Approach to Explore Harmonisation Problems?
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 74, 2020 15
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