The legal effects of harmonised standards in EU law: From hard to soft law, and back?

Technical standards are a form of soft law which has long played a fundamental role in the regulation of the internal market of the EU. Initially developed as purely private, voluntary instruments, the New Approach has used them as regulatory tools for harmonisation. The progressive evolution of legislation, institutional practice and case law has fundamentally changed their position within the EU legal framework. This chapter retraces this evolution and focuses in particular on the legal effects of harmonised standards, analysing the relevant shifts in regulatory technique and in judicial interpretation in terms of the ‘hardening’ or ‘softening’ of the rules of conduct contained in harmonised standards.