Methodological Europeanism at the Cradle: Eur-lex, the Acquis and the Making of Europe’s Cognitive Equipment

Abstract

This article tracks the origins of one of Europe’s most ubiquitous instrument: the acquis. Thereby, it aims at initiating a new research program on the genealogy of Europe’s cognitive and technique equipment. Instead of considering the acquis as a self-explanatory and transparent notion, the article unearths its rich political meaning, pointing at its instrumental role in shaping a law-centered, and supranational definition of Europe. Digging deep into individual and institutional genealogies, the article follows the methodological entrepreneurs who crafted new knowledge instruments for calculating Europe’s State of affairs (the Celex database) and analyzes the process through which they have progressively acquired a monopoly in the calculation of ‘the State of the Union,’ thereby encapsulating within the very rules of the European game itself a form of ‘methodological Europeanism’.

Key Words:

• EU Polity
• science studies
• techniques of government
• methodological Europeanism

Acknowledgement

This article was written while I was a senior Emile Noël fellow at the New York University’s Jean Monnet Center. I am grateful to the participants at the Spring 2014 Jean Monnet Workshop at NYU and EU Law Workshop at Columbia University for helpful comments on earlier versions of the text. Special thanks to Megan Donaldson, Grainne de Burca, Dan Kelemen, Peter Lindseth, and Jonathan Yovel for stimulating exchanges.

Notes

1. While the Commission estimated this amount to 80,000 pages in 2001 (cf. European Commission 2001b), many have discussed the accuracy and the relevance of this figure ever since: see, inter alia, Open Europe (2007), and Bertoncini (2009).

2. The Eur-lex website actually claims ‘468,000 references, about 5.7 million documents in total, an average of 12,000 references are added each year, 23 languages’ and an average of 7 million visits every month.

3. On the acquis as the inescapable frame of reference in the recent enlargement negotiations to eastern and central European countries, see Robert (2003) and Adler-Nissen (2011).

4. On the ‘political potential’ of methodologies, see Breslau (1997).

5. While part of the empirical material presented here is brought from my previous research on the genesis of EU law’s definitional power (Vauchez 2013), the present article expands it and brings it into a new research program on the genealogy of ‘methodological Europeanism.’

6. But see Rowell and Penissat (2014) on Eurostat in this dossier and Philippe Aldrin on the Eurobarometer (2010).

7. In a very rich and diverse literature, see the seminal book by Alain Derosieres (2002), Pierre Bourdieu’s Lectures at the Collège de France on the State (2014) and the important project on the genesis of the modern State in Europe led by Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet (1993).

8. While the literature on ‘policy instruments’ bears similarities with our approach, it does not, however, provide a specific statute for knowledge instruments and data collection (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007).

9. On the importance of this cognitive advantage in establishing jurisdiction over a given social problem, see Abbott (2005).

10. For an enlightening parallel, see the historical account of the creation of the Official Journal in France (Gougeon 1995).

11. While there are many interesting studies of the acquis that point at its strategic importance in embodying the unity of the European project (Jorgensen 1999; Wiener 1998), none actually questioned its genesis and how this may have concretely shaped Europe.

12. On the principle of contextualism as a key empirical strategy for the sociology of knowledge, see the introduction to this dossier by Adler-Nissen and Kropp (2015).

13. Cf. ‘Droit des affaires et Marché commun,’ Le Monde, 9 April 1958. For an English-speaking equivalent, see the Encyclopedia of European Community Law published from 1973 onwards by Sweet and Maxwell.

14. The Council’s declaration after The Hague conference of heads of States and of government, 1 and 2 December 1969.

15. In the words of the Director of the Council’s Legal Service, Puissochet (1974).

16. In 1972, she would actually defend a doctoral thesis in German law at the University of Frankfurt am Main on the logic applied in international multilingual law (Bernet 1983, 2006).

17. Hélène Bernet, Email exchanges with the author, 2008. Our translation.

18. Ibid.

19. Strikingly, until 1981, only the Legal Service and a limited network of ‘Celex correspondents’ in the directorates-general were ‘entitled to consult the records and effect retrieval’ of EU law on Celex terminals (Gaskell 1977, 79).

20. While the opinion of the Commission would not gain official recognition in the subsequent Acts of Accession, it would continuously recall its importance in opinions copy-pasted from that of January 1972: for example, European Commission (1981, 119).

21. The document was published only 22 years later (Pescatore 2007).

22. On the history of Celex’s institutional affiliations (Official Publications Office 2006).

23. Ever since Council Regulation 216/2013, only the electronic editions of the OJ (e-OJ) published after 1 July 2013 are authentic (have legal force).