Legal interpretation of the Directive 92/50/EEC in differing contexts

Abstract: The Council Directive 92/50/EEC of 18 June 1992 relating to the coordination of procedures for the award of public service contracts establishes shared rules and procedures for the award of public service contracts within the internal market. The directive defines the public service contract award criteria, contracting authorities are bound to apply. Purpose of this study is to demonstrate how legal concepts expressed in the directive 92/50/EEC are interpreted by national authorities in different normative contexts and how their interpretative approaches differ from the court of justice’s. The aim of this paper is to determine, how extra-legal rules shape how authorities make sense of meanings while they interpret the directive. The reviewed legal cases are alleged failures of a member state to fulfill its obligations. The legal texts are records of infringement proceedings where the disputing parties are the Commission and a member state of the European Union before the European Court of Justice. The initial non-random sample chosen is 20 legal cases. These cases are reviewed to determine how authorities have made sense of inadequately interpreted meanings. In 12 out of 20 legal cases, context of application is observed to affect meaning-making. Outcomes of legal interpretation have not been legally valid from the perspective of the ECJ. This study discusses how extra-legal rules affects the process of interpreting the directive’s legal text. The method employed to study the legal cases is analysis of text, in a form of qualitative content analysis. Purpose of analysis is to determine how authorities interpret meanings in their normative context. Observation period is chosen from January 1992 to January 2014. All reviewed legal cases are searchable at the Curia database with their respective case codes. Legal cases are studied, because they consitute records about the previous communicative actions of parties.