Chapter 3 - Overview Of Eu Optional Instruments

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Having defined the fundamental nature of Optional Instruments of the European Union, it now becomes necessary to describe the various EU OIs under examination in this study in detail. Before commencing this overview of EU OIs, however, it should be reiterated that the present study does not cover (nor does it seek to cover) every single EU OI that has been adopted or proposed by the European legislator to date. Instead, our focus will rather be on three areas of European law in which a series of EU OIs have been adopted/proposed – namely European company law, European intellectual property law and European procedural law –, as well as on a proposal for an optional instrument in the area of European contract law that has since been withdrawn. As we shall see, all of these EU OIs have been around (in one form or another) for some years already, and many of them possess particularly interesting characteristics.

Thus, with this being said, in what follows an overview of each of these EU OIs (twelve in total) will be provided, charting their development since the European legislator enacted the very first optional instrument of the Community in the field of company law in 1985. This overview will systematically address a range of points, including the nature of, background to and legal base for the optional instrument; the aims and objectives behind the optional instrument; the legal and institutional framework, substantive content and scope of the optional instrument; and the advantages of the optional instrument, as well as (where appropriate) relevant statistics on its application. The chapter will then conclude with a brief comparison of these EU OIs, making reference to different aspects highlighted in the overview.

EU OIs in the Area of European Company Law

The European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG)

As was already mentioned, the very first Optional Instrument (OI) to be formally adopted at EU-level was the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG), enacted by means of a Regulation on 25 July 1985. Pertaining to the field of European Company law, this legislation created a new Community-wide form of corporate legal entity, to be added to the list of existing national company forms available to private actors in each of the Member States.