and that the importance of legislative history simply has to be reduced in order for Sweden to adapt to other European countries. One such assertion is that EU law acts should be implemented entirely in the form of statutes, not by way of legislative history, for reasons of “legal security” and “foreseeability”.14 Thus it is the same argument as advanced by the Commission in this case.Another claim is that EU statutory interpretation is much more guided by general principles, and not by legislative intent (and consequently not by legislative history), which means that Swedish judges and lawyers must in the long term change their habits in favour of a greater independence of legislative history.15The complicated question about different theories of statutory interpretation will, for the time being, be set aside.The important connection in this context, which is the main question on the legitimacy of legislative history as a source of law, is that these statements are to be construed more as expressions of wishful thinking than as faithful descriptions of reality.The dominating impression is that Swedish legal scholars use the suggested (but far from proved) influence of EU law as a device to fight what they perceive to be the fundamentally unsound importance of legislative history, much in the way of the American textualist school. Legal scholars may find it useless to try to persuade the Swedish government and its judges to refrain from the application of legislative history.The pressure to change, supposedly emanating from the demands of EU law, has become a convenient excuse for Sweden’s legal academics to question the legitimacy of legislative history as a source of law.16 Hence one may assume that some Swedish legal authorities considered that the action taken by the Commission in this case was not only logical but also a well-intentioned step towards at least reducing the importance (though not the complete annihilation) of legislative history. r i chard nordqu i st 201 14 “ ... in Swedish law we often ‘legislate through legislative history’.When it comes to implementing directives this is often a bad method. It is important for the sake of foreseeability that important issues are discussed and solved not only by way of proposition statements.The goal should be that the entire implementation takes place in the statute.”, J. Herre, Implementering av EG-direktiv, Svensk Juristtidning 2003, p. 442. 15 According to some scholars and lawyers the “nervous research for legislative intent” should be replaced by the use of “general principles of law”;H.Tiberg, P. Bratt, Domare och lagmotiv, Svensk Juristtidning 1989, p. 425. 16 This conclusion is drawn by U. Öberg, Några anteckningar om användningen av förarbeten inom gemenskapsrätten, Juridisk Tidskrift 2001/01 nr. 2, p. 507.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=