European Legal Method in Denmark and Sweden—Using Social Science Theory and Methodology to Describe the Implementation of EU Law

This article presents data from a study in which national bureaucrats working in the fields of taxation and food law in Sweden and Denmark are asked which legal sources and methods of interpretation they use when implementing EU law. The purpose is to contribute to the discussion about European legal method by using social science methodology. National agencies and authorities in the fields of taxation and food law face a ‘multilayered’ or ‘multiprincipal’ reality in which there is room for policy choices. The answers given by the interviewees speak of a plurality of legal sources, a situation where bureaucrats are becoming reluctant lawmakers instructing others on how EU law is to be applied and where bureaucrats find it necessary to found their decisions on what colleagues within the authority or from other Member States have said about how EU law should be applied.