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documents, a “regulation,” a “directive” and a “decision” represent
legally binding documents, thus their fulfilment is obligatory for EU
member states. “recommendations” and “opinions” are legally non-
binding EU documents. In addition, the article 288 also identifies the
so-called Atypical Acts, which include inter-institutional agreements
(e.g. the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament and of the
Commission), which are legally binding acts, as well as non-binding
acts such as, for example, resolutions. Thus, resolutions of the
European Parliament or resolutions of the Council of the EU only give
recommendations and express the positions of the EU institutions.
Despite the non-binding character of such documents, they still
carry significant political importance within the Union as well as for
non-EU member states. Such states use non-binding documents for
lobbying/promoting topics which are important for them in the EU
institutions and in bilateral relations with EU member states. EU non-
binding documents also play an important role in the internal political
processes of non-EU member states. In Georgian internal politics, too,
one may often notice a reference to relevant resolutions of the EU
Parliament.
To sum up, regulations, directives and decisions can be treated
as EU decisions which put legal obligations vis-à-vis the parties
concerned. Readers are now able to single out those documents, which
legally represent EU decisions.
Let us now see how EU decisions are adopted. Through further
analysis, we will explore the unique specificities of EU decision-making
procedures and identify the roles of the relevant EU institutions in
these processes.