A Short Note on Methodology : An Eclectic and Heuristic Multi-Disciplinary and Functional Approach to EU Law

This short note on methodology has been extracted from my PhD thesis, which deals with the relationship between public procurement and competition policy at the EU level (a reworked version has been recently published as Public Procurement and the EU Competition Rules, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2011). Therefore, the following pages will explore the methodology chosen to conduct a study that mainly aimed to answer the following research question: How can and should publicly-generated competitive distortions in the public procurement field be addressed under EU economic law and, particularly, under the general framework of competition and public procurement law? In order to address such a macro-legal question (and the implied micro-legal questions), I opted for an eclectic and heuristic multi-disciplinary and functional approach to EU Law. The following pages develop the reasons behind such an option which, it must be stressed, was strongly conditioned by the aim of my research. Hopefully, however, the justification for such a methodology will serve as a (limited) case study for researchers approaching similar topics related to EU Law