EU Regulations as a Hybrid Genre

The textual and linguistic construction of European law is seen as a symptom of a predictable – and indeed real – democratic deficit. At a micro level, the EU terminological hybridity that characterises the source and target texts is directly linked to this legal hybridity: since law only exists in human language, a hybrid legal order needs hybrid tools to fulfil its prescriptive and communicative functions, i.e. a hybrid language. EU law “as a hybrid legal order sui generis or tertium compartionis, juxtaposing and combining very different legal systems, cultures and styles” (Jopek-Bosiacka 2011:26), creates a “hybrid pan-European culture grounded in EU law and the ius commune of Europe [and makes possible] the coexistence of national and EU legal culture” (Bajcic 2016: 12). This study is at the intersection of these two levels where law and culture meet terminology, or in other words, where legal and cultural principles are textualised.