EU-Rechtsetzungslabor | LegislEUlab   2024

écoblanchiment - Grünfärberei - manipulativnog zelenog marketinga - viherpesuun - marketing ambientale fuorviante

Waschen, Bleichen, Färben - Irreführung über Umweltverträglichkeit

Unser beliebtes interdisziplinäres rechtslinguistisches EU-Rechtsetzungslabor hat auch 2024 unter Beteiligung von Akteur_innen aus EU-Institutionen stattgefunden (5.-11.9.). Die Einführungsveranstaltungen fanden im Juni 2024 statt. Die Zertifikate wurden im November feierlich überreicht (siehe unter Menupunkt Aktivitäten).

Die Ergebnisse werden 2025 in der Kölner Publikationsreihe Europäische Rechtslinguistik (KPER) Band 5 publiziert.  / 

The results of the summer school will be published in 2025 as Kölner Publikationsreihe Europäische Rechtslinguistik (KPER) Vol. 5: 

Burr, Isolde / Dillmann, Ruben / Heinemann, Ellen / Mattissen, Johanna (eds.) 2025: LEGISLEULAB der Europäischen Rechtslinguistik 2024 / LEGISLEULAB for European Legal Linguistics 2024. Köln: Universität zu Köln.

If you are interested in a copy, please contact us at css-erl [at] uni-koeln.de .

Washing, bleaching, colouring - false claims on environmental merits

Our interdisciplinary legal-linguistic EU legislative drafting lab 2024 took place in Sep. 5-11, featuring EU institutional professionals. Kick-off sessions were held in June. The certificates were awarded in November (see menu “Aktivitäten”).

As usual, the CSS-ERL dealt with an ongoing EU legislative procedure, namely the Commission’s proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (“Green Claims Directive”; 2023/0085(COD)). The students were immediately familiar with issues of “greenwashing” or, more general, marketing with environmental claims and could therefore discuss legal and linguistic issues without losing track of the text’s potential meaning for their daily lives.

After an introduction to the EU legislative procedure and the methodology of European legal linguistics, the participants analysed the articles controversial between the Commission, the Council and the Parliament in project groups and drafted their own text proposals based on the material provided to them and further research by themselves. Particular attention was paid to the comparison of versions of the proposed Green Claims Directive in all 24 official languages of the EU: terminology, the distinction between national and supranational legal concepts, the impact of various syntactic constructions on the interpretation of text passages, and divergences between the language versions were analysed.

At first, some students found the complexity of the topic daunting and were somewhat uncertain whether they could contribute relevant results to the analysis of the existing texts or even write new ones. However, insightful presentations of professionals of the European Union as well as short lectures by the CSS-ERL team quickly gave rise to more understanding and confidence. “The amount of expertise and knowledge provided was outstanding and very helpful for insights and completion of the task”, said one student afterwards, “we had detailed presentations about what to consider” and “we could always reach out to legal and linguistic experts to ask questions”, remarked another.

Comprehensive results were also possible because of the mother tongues and foreign languages the participants had command of. Although the students had either a purely legal or a purely linguistic background, they were able to complement each other during the work phases and to grasp the basics of the other subjects. It was the group work that really lead to great results. In the end, a student stated that “I particularly liked the opportunity to draft an article and come up with a compromise”. “It was a wonderful experience and I learnt so many things”, summarized another student.

The project work on the premises of the University of Cologne was crowned by a varied cultural and social programme in Cologne, enabling people to get to know each other and forge new friendships. The programme ended with an almost traditional dinner at the well-known “Haus Schwan”. After submitting personal essays, the students received a certificate for their successful participation in a hybrid award ceremony in November.