Ambiguity in EU Law - A Linguistic and Legal Analysis

Ambiguity - an expression or utterance giving rise to at least two mutually exclusive interpretations - has been traditionally regarded as an ever-present, and therefore trivial, feature of EU law, alongside other forms of linguistic indeterminacy. At the same time, ambiguity has been condemned as a perilous defect in the legal text, since it is commonly assumed that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) would necessarily exploit it to engage in judicial activism. In contrast, more recent theories present ambiguity as a means of promoting greater acceptability and coherence, while trusting the CJEU''s willingness to exert judicial restraint for the benefit of judicial co-operation.

This ground-breaking work challenges some of the theoretical assumptions about ambiguity in EU law and puts forward a more accurate and complete theory about the CJEU''s strategic use of ambiguity. Ambiguity is here transformed from an underestimated or misunderstood detail of undetermined signific