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Ajouter un commentaireComitology refers to the exercise of implementing powers at the EU level. Whilst Member States are in charge of executing EU legislation ‘on the ground’, there is a necessity to initiate European implementing measures to guarantee the uniform implementation of EU law in the 27 Member States. Without such measures, legislation - regulation and directives in the EU context - cannot work properly.
Concretely, comitology committees are composed by representatives of the 27 Member States, and the meetings are chaired by the European Commission. The role of the Commission is to make proposals of draft implementing measures which are discussed and voted upon by the national representatives, following the same voting rules used in co-decision (i.e. qualified majority vote).
Comitology committees are almost as old as the European Union. Already in the sixties, the Council needed a fast lane for approving the technicalities of the common agricultural policy (e.g. cereal markets). As the competences of the European Union expended, so did comitology committees and the number of measures they approved. It became rapidly clear that such a system was to develop in other domains, accompanying the expansion of powers granted to the supranational level (health, consumer protection, environmental policy etc.).
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source : flickr
As a result of inter-institutional conflicts and attempts of simplification, the functioning of the committees - i.e. their voting procedures, the involvement of the European Parliament - has dramatically changed over the years. The Treaty of Lisbon has brought yet another reform, whose last piece has been implemented with Regulation 182/2011, entered into force on March 1st. A new ‘comitology puzzle’ is now under great observation of academics and practitioners : how does post-Lisbon comitology look like ?
New labels, new procedures
With Lisbon, all new (and old, with some exceptions) measures will be classified either as ‘implementing acts’ (article 291) - purely executive measures - and ‘delegated acts’ (article 290) – quasi-legislative measures.
Delegated Acts
Article 290 regulates the ‘delegated acts’, for which the Commission is granted the power to supplement or amend non-essential elements of the legislation. The main innovations with ‘delegated acts’ :
1. There are no committees anymore, even though the Commission declared that it would continue to meet with the national representatives (in the format of expert group meetings) on these matters. The result of these consultations will have no binding effect on its decision. 2. Now on an equal footing, both the European Parliament and the Council have a veto right to object on any grounds the acts adopted by the Commission, whereas under the previous system the European Parliament’s powers of objection were limited to three conditions which de facto limited its margin of maneuver. 3. The control mechanism at the disposal of the legislators is further reinforced by a revocation right. In concrete terms, this means that the delegation granted to the Commission may be taken back at any time by the Council and/or the Parliament.
These last two elements counterbalance to a certain extent what seems to be an empowerment of the Commission. Indeed, the Commission is now responsible for drafting and adopting the measures, whereas the legislators are granted an ex post possibility of repealing the measures (veto right). Some have argued that such a system would grant too much power to the Commission.
However, the new rules simply help putting each institution in its respective position. Given the absence of horizontal framework and the consequence that the scope, objectives and duration of delegated acts will have to be decided for each basic act, the legislators will have a more significant ex ante responsibility of deciding what the input and the output of delegation, and execution, should be.
This being said, the chances are great that the legislators will tend to oppose the Commission’s delegated acts since veto and revocation are perceived as the only tools in their hands to ‘control’ the Commission (consultative role of the committees). In particular, we might expect the European Parliament to make a political use of its veto power, as the Commission has already experienced in the past comitology system.
A whole new Article 291 !
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source : flickr
Article 291 refers to the ‘traditional’ comitology system as it deals with purely implementing measures. For these latter, committees of national representatives continue to play a role. Contrary to article 290 which applies since 1 December 2009, article 291 explicitly required the adoption of a regulation to lay out the rules and procedures of the committees. The new Regulation came into force in March 2011, and it reduces existing procedures from three to two : advisory and examination. While an ‘advisory committee’ only delivers not binding opinion, the ‘examination committee’ can veto the proposal of the Commission.
But the most important innovation is that the new comitology leave Member States in charge of the all procedure. In fact, the examination procedure might necessitate the referral to an ‘appeal committee’, composed of representatives of Member States and chaired by the Commission. Differently from before, there is no referral to the Council in case of negative opinion from the committee. Respecting the original principle of the Treaty, namely that the execution power belongs to Member States, the new Regulation gives to the Council only a ‘right of scrutiny’ that it shares with the European Parliament.
Better or worse ?
While only the daily practice will show whether the new system has allowed overcoming inter-institutional mistrust and conflicts, it should be recognized that the Lisbon Treaty represents a significant step towards more clarification and, potentially, more transparency.
Procedures might still seem very intricate to you. However, one should not forget that comitology deals with technical issues but it has proved to work well. Its rather unusual design results from a difficult compromise among EU institutions. Trying to get a grasp of who does what is already a good starting point to get its way into this very important part of EU decision-making puzzle.
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