joint action

A legal instrument under the former Title VI of the EU Treaty that was used between 1993 to 1999. It provided for coordinated action by Member States on behalf of the Union or within the EU framework in cases where the Union’s objectives could be attained more effectively by joint action than by the Member States acting individually. Under the Treaty of Amsterdam it has been replaced by ‘decisions’ and ‘framework decisions’. (See Judicial-criminal: Trafficking in human beings, Definitions Scadplus)