A notable trend in recent scholarship on the nature of the European Union and

its democratic legitimacy focuses on the concept of `legislation and its

employment within the European Community's legal system. In this remarkable

work of synthesis, Alexander Tand#252;rk exposes and elucidates the underlying

uncertainty as to the meaning of the term, and even its legitimate use, within

the Community's legal order. He arrives at a clear evaluation of the extent to

which the concept of legislation can be applied in the EC through a

comparative analysis of the British, French, and German constitutional

systems, and proceeds to reveal and highlight aspects of the concept of

legislation derived from this analysis appearing in areas of EC law.

A number of crucially significant insights emerge, among them the following:

• 
  
  the distinction between `legislation in form' and `legislation in substance';
  
  



• 
  
  defining the addressee of Community acts;
  
  



• 
  
  judicial determination of the general application of an act;
  
  



• 
  
  the relevance of the EU's system of functional (rather than personal)
  
  representation; and
  
  



• 
  
  the co-decision and assent procedures of the EU institutions as `legislation
  
  in form.
  
  

All those interested in the nature of the EC legal system and the state of its

development will find this study richly rewarding. Building rigorously on

detailed analysis of EC case law and on prior scholarship, the book shows the

way to a new understanding of the relevance of the concept of legislation to

the solution of some of the EU's most pressing legal issues.