Experiences from Professional Practice: Some Steps towards Empirical Research
Experiences from Professional Practice: Some Steps towards Empirical Research
The Binding Unity and Divergent Concepts in EU Law project sought to establish the scope of the phenomenon of ‘conceptual divergence’ by gathering data from the daily practice and personal experience of legal professionals involved in European law. This chapter presents an account of the response to a questionnaire: how conceptual divergence is detected, perceived, and dealt with in legal practice, and how it is evaluated in the long run. According to some respondents, conceptual divergence may occur in relation to concepts such as ne bis in idem, or ‘penalty’ and ‘sanction’ (terms that are used interchangeably in EU law, much to the confusion of Dutch lawyers to whom they mean different things). Others are ‘detention’, ‘confiscation’ (a term that in Dutch legal language triggers the question of whether it is to be translated as verbeurdverklaring or onttrekking aan het verkeer) and, again, the concept of ‘goods’.
Keywords: conceptual divergence, survey, Binding Unity and Divergent Concepts in EU Law, European law, cooperation
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