the rights and obligations of individuals. This approach can have an important impact on the functions that some soft law instruments play at a regulatory level. Thus, even if certain soft law is issued by the European Commission in order to enhance the protection of several principles of law at the same time, only some of those values can be accommodated. Judicial control of soft law Courts have admitted that sometimes soft law interpreting hard law provisions creates new obligations and has a binding legal effect. In such situations, soft law is considered ultra vires and is annulled by the Courts, as only instruments having a legally binding force can lawfully create new obligations for individuals or MS. A classical example is the annulment of the communication on the application of the financial transparency directive to public undertakings in the manufacturing sector. While a general obligation to supply information on financial relations between the State and public undertakings was provided for in the directive, the implementing communication created a supplementary obligation, by requiring specific data to be sent annually. The Court considered that the communication added to the obligations laid out by the directive, and annulled it for failure to provide the legal basis from which it derived its binding force, in accordance to the principle of legal certainty. Thus, the does not judge admissibility of an action only by the form of the act, but analyses its substance in order to determine whether it produces legal effects or not, and whether it can be judicially controlled or not. This should be putting minds at ease, as the Court appears to remain the watchdog of EU legislation, be it soft or hard. Furthermore, the Court employs a refined analysis and distinguishes between instruments deprived of legally binding force and hard law, while not attempting to turn one into the other as critics of soft law might argue. There is thus a limit to the obligations that can be lawfully imposed by
coordination. His conclusion was threefold. First, the new governance instruments under investigation were not referred to in the case law to a significant extent. In his view, this occurs because unlike other soft law instruments, the OMC instruments have a solely political value and are not necessarily linked to hard law provisions, and they do not interpret directives, regulations or the Treaty. Second, the ideational repertoire of Lisbon strategy – covering terms such as competitveness and sustainability – appears more and more in the case law of the EU Courts, especially after 2000. However, as Smismans himself points out, arguing that this proves an engagement with the objectives of OMC processes is purely speculative, in the absence of judicial analyses of the instruments themselves. Finally, there is no conclusive evidence showing that Courts act as guardians of procedural standards and good administration principles in relation to processes like the OMC. The research conducted by Smismans is undoubtedly sector and key word specific. Nonetheless, given the absence of relevant results in the two of the main OMC policy areas, judicial engagement with instruments issued in the framework of Lisbon/Europe 2020 processes appears indeed to be scarce. A more optimistic perspective on the impact of soft law on adjudication is illustrated by Korkea-aho, who looked at the implementation of the Water Framework Directive through soft mechanisms based on networks and consensual enforcement. Empirical evidence showed that soft enforcement mechanisms might streamline legal actions, by offering the information and the administrative resources necessary in order to lead effective infringement proceedings. Furthermore, managing implementation through networks reduces case load, as problems are solved by participants, without judicial intervention.As briefly outlined in the previous section, competition case law admits legally binding effects of soft law for the European Commission on the basis of a mechanism based on general principles of law (such as legitimate expectations, legal certainty, transparency). Thus, hybrid interactions between