We have already looked at how to reference legislation from England as well as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland using OSCOLA, for which you can see the relevant blog by clicking on the region you want to know about. This blog will explain how you use the OSCOLA referencing system for legislation from the European Union (EU).
It is important to remember that while the UK has decided to leave the EU, it has not done so yet and all legislation and court decisions still apply currently. Therefore, you should still reference all EU sources correctly in your work. Also, they may still be relevant even after the UK leaves, in the context of historical cases.
EU legislation is in two separate classes for referencing purposes. The first includes EU treaties and protocols and the second includes Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations and Opinions.
Treaties and Protocols
We will look at the basic structure of a citation for EU treaties and protocols, then consider each part individually. The basic format is:
Legislation title | [Year] | OJ series | Issue/first page
Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union [2008] OJ C115/13.
Legislation title
The legislation title should be the common title used, making sure you include any amendments that have been made. It is normal to use the shorter title in later citations, provided this is one that is also used in an official capacity. It’s not necessary to write the full title except for at first mention, as these can often be quite long!
Year
This is just the year that the treaty or protocol was published.
OJ series
OJ is an abbreviation of Official Journal of the European Communities, which has details of all the official notices of the EU. There are separate series of OJ depending on what is being recorded. The L series contains legislation, the C series has EU information and notices and the S series contains invitations to tender.
Treaties and protocols will be part of the L series as legislation is now published in the L series; however, older treaties were published in the C series. There are some exceptions to this – the Lisbon Treaty was still published in the C series, despite being one of the more recent treaties.
Issue/page
This is the issue of the OJ series the treaty or protocol is published in, followed by a forward slash, then the first page the legislation appears on. There should not be any spaces between this or after the series letter:
Protocol to the Agreement on the Member States that do not fully apply the Schengen acquis—Joint Declarations [2007] OJ L129/35.
Remember that a full stop is required at the end of citations in a footnote, but not in a bibliography entry.
Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations and Opinions
These need to be referenced in a slightly different way to treaties and protocols. Again, we will look at each part in turn, starting with the basic format:
Legislation type | Number | Title | [Year] | OJ L | Issue/page
Council Regulation (EC) 1984/2003 of 8 April 2003 introducing a system for the statistical monitoring of trade in bluefin tuna, swordfish and big eye tuna within the Community [2003] OJ L295/1.
Legislation type
This will be one of Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations or Opinions; in the example above, you can see it’s a Council Regulation.
Number
The running number can vary in format according to the type of legislation. For example, the Regulation above has the year after the running number, but this is the other way around with Directives, so the year comes first.
Council Directive 2002/60/EC of 27 June 2002 laying down specific provisions for the control of African swine fever and amending Directive 92/119/EEC as regards Teschen disease and African swine fever [2002] OJ L192/27.
Title
As before, the legislation should be given its full name at first mention, whereas a shorter version can be used in subsequent citations. However, you need to give warning of this shorter version at first mention! Just place it in brackets after the full citation to indicate this is the version you intend to use.
In a footnote, you can simply write the legislation type and number, using the abbreviations “Dir” for Directive and “Reg” for Regulation.
Year
Again, this is just the year the legislation was published.
OJ L
All of the Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations and Opinions from the EU are published in the L series of OJ, so this is simple.
Issue/page
This should be as above for treaties and protocols; just cite the issue the legislation was published in, then a forward slash, then the page number in the issue. There should not be spaces on either side of the forward slash.
Pinpoints
If you want to pinpoint a particular part of a piece of EU legislation, such as an article or paragraph, this should follow the citation. Remember that you can abbreviate article to “art” or articles (plural) to “arts”. The article or paragraph reference should come after the OJ citation and a comma, so for Regulations, Directives, Decisions, Recommendations or Opinions it would be:
Legislation type | Number | Title | [Year] | OJ L | Issue/page, | Pinpoint
Council Directive 91/493/EEC of 22 July 1991 laying down the health conditions for the production and the placing on the market of fishery products, art 3.
Older Legislation
As the Official Journal of the European Communities was not published in English from 1952 to 1972, you should use the Special Edition of the OJ where possible.
Council Regulation (EEC) 1017/68 applying rules of competition to transport by rail, road and inland waterway [1968] OJ Spec Ed 302.
Wrapping Up
EU legislation follows fairly simple rules, so it’s just a matter of applying them correctly and ensuring you use the right referencing style. If there’s anything you’re unsure about, feel free to ask in the comments. Next time we’ll be looking at how to reference cases from the Court of Justice of the European Union.
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