acquis

noun · gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand

The acquis, French acquis communautaire, is the whole body of Union law in force, rendered gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand or Besitzstand der Union and often kept as acquis. It binds all Member States, and an acceding State must take it over in full. It is a corpus of law, not the everyday Besitzstand of acquired individual rights.

Which translation, when

gesamtes Unionsrechtthe content: the acquis is the accumulated body of Union law, the Treaties as primary law, secondary law such as regulations and directives, the case law of the Court of Justice and the agreements the Union has concluded; it binds every Member State, and a State joining the Union must adopt it in full, subject to transitional arrangements agreed in the accession negotiations.

kein Besitzstand im Alltagssinnthe trap: Besitzstand here is a body of law, not the ordinary German Besitzstand of acquired or vested rights, as in the Besitzstandswahrung of labour and social law; English keeps the French acquis, so rendering it as individual erworbene Rechte reads a whole legal order as a set of personal entitlements.

Why

Acquis is the gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand, and the difficulty is twofold, a term left in French and a German word that means something else in ordinary use. The acquis communautaire is the entire body of Union law as it stands: the founding Treaties, the secondary law built on them, the case law of the Court of Justice, the general principles it has developed such as primacy, and the international agreements the Union has entered into. It binds all Member States, and its complete adoption is a condition of accession, so a candidate State must transpose and then apply it, though accession treaties routinely carve out exceptions and transitional periods. In English the French term is usually retained, and German too often writes Acquis alongside gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand or Besitzstand der Union. The word to watch is Besitzstand: in everyday German, and in labour and social law, it names acquired or vested rights, the Besitzstand that Besitzstandswahrung protects. The acquis is not that; it is a corpus of law. Rendering the acquis as erworbene Rechte therefore mistakes an entire legal order for a bundle of personal entitlements. So the safe course keeps acquis or uses gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand and signals that a body of law, not individual rights, is meant.

Typical mistakes

The acquis is the whole body of Union law, not a set of acquired individual rights, so rendering it as erworbene Rechte in the everyday Besitzstand sense misreads it.
The French term is usually kept in both languages, so an over-eager literal translation of acquis can obscure the term of art.
A State joining the Union must adopt the acquis in full, so treating it as optional guidance understates it.

What matters

Rendering a reference to the body of Union law, especially in accession or harmonisation contexts, the translation should keep acquis or use gemeinschaftlicher Besitzstand, and signal that a corpus of law is meant, not the everyday Besitzstand of vested rights. An acceding State takes the acquis over in full, subject to negotiated transitional arrangements.

What the machine misses

Machine output may translate acquis literally or render it through the everyday Besitzstand of acquired rights. It loses that the acquis communautaire is the whole body of Union law, primary and secondary law, the case law of the Court of Justice and the Union’s agreements, that a State joining must take it over in full, and that Besitzstand here means a corpus of law rather than personal entitlements. The rendering shrinks a legal order to a set of rights.

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Examples

the acquis communautaire	der gemeinschaftliche Besitzstand
to adopt the acquis	den Besitzstand übernehmen
the EU acquis	der Besitzstand der Union
compliance with the acquis	Übereinstimmung mit dem Besitzstand