European Union law

Entry twenty-one is il parere motivato, and the second word is the one that misleads. In everyday English « motivated » describes a person: somebody keen, driven, willing to get up early. Nothing of that is meant here. Italian motivare has kept the older, legal job of the Latin motivum, the thing that moves a decision, so motivato says that the grounds have been set down in writing: un provvedimento motivato, una sentenza motivata, l’obbligo di motivazione. A document is motivato when it states why, never when it is enthusiastic. The English term for the same act is « reasoned », and the step the Commission takes before going to the Court is the reasoned opinion. Italian does have the other sense as well — uno studente motivato is a keen student — but in a legal text that reading is simply unavailable, because a decision has no state of mind. The quick test is to ask whether a sheet of paper can be motivato. It can, and that settles which of the two meanings is at work.