Soft law e ordinamento amministrativo

Soft law, as law not legally binding in the traditional sense, can be approached in a systematic perspective. Particularly, soft law raises two central issues: the mechanisms of compliance to soft law and its relationship with the law, or, better, with hard law, that is law legally binding. In European Union order the systematic perspective emerges with greater clarity: European soft law regulates relations between the European institutions; it is halfway between the sources of law and institutional gover nance. In the European dimension, soft law is a particular tool that removes an original “vice of competence” of the Union. In this way soft law recalls the implied powers of the European institutions, as it erodes in the same way the spheres of competence of the Member States. But even at national level, the lack of binding force in the traditional sense hides the political force of soft law: soft law represents a typical source for legal order which asks for instruments other than the formal procedures of constitutional institutions.