Halifax Consulting Belgrade translate a significant part of the EU acquis into Serbian

Halifax Consulting (www.halifaxconsulting.com), a Serbian company based in Belgrade, has just signed a contract with the European Agency for Reconstruction to translate a good part of the EU acquis into Serbian.

The term acquis communautaire, or EU acquis, is used in European Union law to refer to the total body of EU law accumulated so far. The Law of the European Union is a unique legal system which operates alongside the laws of Member States of the EU. It has direct effect within the legal systems of its Member States, and overrides national law in many areas, especially in terms of economic and social policy. The EU is not a federal government, nor is it an intergovernmental organization, but constitutes a new legal order in international law for the mutual social and economic benefit of the Member States. It is sometimes classified as supranational law. Currently there are around 500 million EU citizens in 27 Member States subject to EU law, making it one of the most encompassing modern legal systems in the world.

Applicant countries to the EU are expected to harmonise their legislation with the acquis in their approach to membership. This is a negotiated process in which a applicant state proposes national laws that are in agreement with the acquis, but often tailored to the country's own specific conditions and traditions.

In order to develop Serbian legislation that satisfies harmonisation conditions, a basic step is to provide a high quality translation of the acquis into Serbian. This is a demanding process. Unlike ordinary translation, it must take account of the underlying EU institutional structures, and the often very specific meanings of words when used in an EU context. Translators must understand this context profoundly and should preferably be lawyers themselves. They must work from at least two EU source languages, so as to correlate meanings and make sure no errors creep in. Leading the Halifax team will be Aleksandra Cavoski, a trilingual Serbian lawyer who holds an M.Sc. in EU policymaking and a Ph.D. in the procedures of accession.

The initial task is to translate around 16,000 pages of the most important legal texts. This is just a beginning – there is at present a body of perhaps 200,000 pages of legislation and jurisprudence, and it is growing all the time.

Halifax Consulting provides project management in a range of fields, from infrastructure development to training and institutional capacity building, with a speciality in project design and monitoring. Clients include the European Agency for Reconstruction, the World Bank, government ministries and private companies.