Acquis (short acquis communautaire) is French for ”that which has been acquired”; in EU context it refers to the entire body of European Union law, principles, and obligations that all member statesMember StateMember State (abbr. MS) is how eurocrats call a country which is part of the European Union. Clear writing guidelines recommend using EU country or EU countries instead, but some habits are hard to die. must accept and apply.

Together with stagiaireTraineeWhile everybody else was thinking of becoming an astronaut or a princess, a trainee, as a child, had only one dream: “Working in the European Institutions”. And they never gave it up! They sent their cv, they filled in and interimaireInterimaireInterimaires are trainees who failed to become Contract Agents and ended up in the institutions' purgatory: they work hard, pay taxes on their salary (the ultimate Eurocrat's shame), and have a weekly renewable contract, acquis is one of the few French words surviving in EUlingo, after the language of Napoleon was abandoned as lingua franca of the EU institutions, somewhere around the turn of the 21st Century.