This incisive book evaluates the legal effects of soft law, its foundations and how they behave in some of the most innovative areas of EU law. Combining theory, language and sectoral insights, this comprehensive review uses case studies to shed new light on the three core areas of soft law.

The book opens with an exploration of the meaning and scope of EU soft law’s legal effects from a theoretical and doctrinal perspective. Chapters analyse the role, contribution and broader legal effectiveness of the language employed by EU authorities when drafting soft law instruments. Finally, in a ground-up approach to the research topic, the book discusses soft law’s legal effects within three areas of EU legislation, namely financial supervision, technical standardisation and telecommunications law.



Advancing a legal and argumentative toolkit to evaluate and improve EU soft law’s persuasiveness, this title will be advantageous to academics, practitioners and policy-makers with specialisations in European law, constitutional and administrative law and regulation and governance.