Our Managing Partner, Dr. Dimitris Tsibanoulis participated in the ECB/ESCB Legal Conference 2026, entitled “Independence, not isolation: central banks and their connections with other authorities”, held at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt on 28–29 September 2026. During the discussion following Panel 5 – “Preparing the legal form: the ECB as part of multilevel legislative drafting”, Dimitris Tsibanoulis intervened on the importance of the proper transposition of EU Directives into national law.

He emphasised that the transposition of a Directive should not be treated as a merely formal or mechanical exercise of reproducing EU legislation in national law. Rather, it requires the substantive integration of EU rules into the domestic legal order, taking due account of both pre-existing provisions of national law and established national legal terminology.

He noted, in particular, that secondary EU legislation necessarily has to be drafted in legal language that is neutral in relation to the different national legal systems. The mechanical or verbatim reproduction of the terminology used in a Directive may therefore create uncertainty or even confusion where national law already uses different, well-established legal concepts or terminology for the same matters.

The transposition of EU Directives by national legislators should therefore not be regarded as a mere bureaucratic exercise, but as a substantive law-making process, closely connected with legal certainty and predictability, the consistent and uniform application of EU law, and the reduction of regulatory fragmentation.