A. Background

Certain provisions of the law might be ambiguous and not clear enough thus it comes the necessity of interpretation.

In the case of the European Law, interpretation becomes really important because of the actual need to implement the European Law in all 27 current members.

Art. 19 para. 1 of the TEU gives exclusive competence to the ECJ to interpret the European Law and it shall ensure that in the interpretation and application of the Treaties the law is observed.

B. Method of literal interpretation

Literal interpretation is the one method arising from the literal meaning of the words. According to Moens and Trone, “where the legal provisions are clear, the Court will usually not depart from their literal meaning. The Court has described the plain meaning as the “normal meaning of the words used”.The literal interpretation shall be considered the first interpretation to apply. Only in case the literal interpretation is not sufficient, the judge or tribunal shall utilize the other mechanisms of interpretation. In the European Union, literal interpretation can be difficult to use due to the existence of 27 Member States and their corresponding official languages.

Literal interpretation is utilized by the ECJ to interpret a word or a phrase part of a provision which meaning is not certainly clear. The literal interpretation is a tool that can be used with other types of interpretation to discover the real meaning of a provision or part of it.

In the case Denmark v. Commission, there was confusion in a government procurement case between interested party and tenderer and the possibility of submitting only one proposal per party. The ECJ first applied the literal interpretation to define “tenderer” and made a difference with the term “interested apply”, but realized that it was insufficient to clarify the case. Then, the ECJ applied other mechanisms of interpretation. 

As conclusion, literal interpretation can be a limited mechanism of interpretation and shall be used as basis to start the interpretation of word or phrase part of a legal provision.