delegated act

Which translation, when

Why

Delegated act translates as delegierter Rechtsakt, and the pair matters because the German term names a precise constitutional slot, not a loose description. Art. 290 Abs. 1 AEUV lets a legislative act confer on the Commission the power to adopt acts without legislative character, of general application, to supplement or amend certain non-essential elements of the conferring act; the conferral must state objectives, content, scope and duration expressly, and the essential aspects of a field are reserved to the legislative act, beyond any delegation. The control architecture is the second marker: Art. 290 Abs. 2 gives Parliament and Council the two leashes, revocation of the delegation and an objection window before entry into force, Parliament by a majority of its members, the Council by qualified majority; the Commission consults member-state experts under the 2016 Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making, but no committee of member-state representatives votes anywhere in the procedure. That is the working contrast to the Durchführungsrechtsakt of Art. 291, where the member states control the Commission through comitology committees; the boundary between the two runs between completing or amending the legislative framework and merely implementing it under uniform conditions, and because procedure, control and the way an act can be attacked all hang on that sorting, the translator who writes one for the other has moved the text across a constitutional line. The vocabulary follows the Treaty: Art. 290 Abs. 3 orders the word delegiert into the title, so the species are the delegierte Verordnung, the delegierte Richtlinie and the delegierter Beschluss, sitting under the general forms of Art. 288 that the regulation entry holds. The Brussels corridor shorthand delegierter Akt travels widely and reads as jargon in a German legal text; the drafting word is Rechtsakt, and a translation should say so.

Typical mistakes

• A delegated act supplements or amends the legislative act and an implementing act merely implements it under uniform conditions, so swapping the terms moves procedure, control and the line of attack.
• The leash on delegated acts is held by Parliament and Council, revocation and objection, not by member-state committees, so importing comitology into this entry describes the wrong instrument.
• Delegierter Akt is corridor shorthand, the drafting language says delegierter Rechtsakt, and the title carries the word delegiert by Treaty command.

What matters

A compliance memo tracking a Commission measure under an EU regulation: the German text should say delegierter Rechtsakt where the measure supplements or amends the basic act, reserve Durchführungsrechtsakt for uniform-condition implementation, and name the species, delegierte Verordnung, exactly as the Official Journal does.

Examples