Harmonisation of law

In relation to the European Union, harmonisation of law (or simply "harmonisation") is the process of creating common standards across the internal market.

Though each EU member State has the primary responsibility for the regulation of most matters within their jurisdiction and consequently each has its own laws. Harmonisation aims to:

An objective of the European Union to achieve uniformity in laws of member states is to facilitate free trade and protect citizens.

Harmonisation is a process of ascertaining the admitted limits of international unification but does not necessarily amount to a vision of total uniformity.

Harmonisation is usually not comprehensive but is relatively partial. That is, harmonisation of law doesn’t seek to create a sole authority of law on a particular subject. This is because measures to harmonise law cannot go further than that which is necessary.

Harmonisation is unsystematic. The directives of the European Union do not focus on or contain comprehensive regulation of the entire law. The directives regulate some very specific issues and they regulate them only for particular situations or circumstances and only for particular types of parties. This is most prevalent in European Union contract law.

Harmonisation generally takes place on two levels of governance, the overarching body and each of the members individually. Taking the European Union, the two levels are the European level and national level. Although both European and national legislators share the legislative responsibilities, neither of these bodies has final responsibility for the whole. Also, there is no superior political authority which has the final say on who is responsible for what, i.e. no overarching authority over the European and national legislators. The European Court of Justice may however determine the extent of harmonization when determining cases.

Harmonisation is dynamic and this is its most appealing feature. The instruments of harmonization aim at change, in particular improving and establishing consistent conditions for the operation of legal principles.

“Unlike unification which contemplates the substitution of two or more legal systems with one single system, harmonisation of law arises exclusively in comparative law literature, and especially in conjunction with interjurisdictional, private transactions. Harmonisation seeks to ‘effect an approximation or co-ordination of different legal provision or systems by eliminating major differences and creating minimum requirements or standards’”

Unification focuses upon substituting or combining two or more legal systems and replacing them with a single system. Harmonisation on the other hand seeks to co-ordinate different legal systems by “eliminating major differences and creating minimum requirements or standards”.

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Wikipedia