The article defines and explicates the concept of gold-plating, i.e. non-minimalistic transposition of EU directives. It describes its typical manifestations in legislative practice and elaborates when and why it should be avoided. It is submitted in the article that the Czech methodological transposition guidelines and RIA methodology insufficiently deal with the issue of gold-plating. Therefore, the article seeks to propose amendments to the relevant Czech methodology so as to limit the occurrence of unjustified gold-plating in Czech legislation.
This article shows that although EU Member States are quite unsuccessful when they plead many different grounds before the ECJ to justify the non-transposition of EU directives, there are still strikingly many grounds that can possibly justify non-transposition. This article also argues that although there are many good reasons for the ECJ to be very strict in accepting possible grounds justifying the non-transposition of EU directives, there was no good reason for the ECJ to reject as justifying basis one special case of the pointlessness of the transposition. Namely the pointlessness because an activity referred to in a directive does not yet exist in a Member State due to an EU law compatible national legal obstacle for such activity in that State.