Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Schaefer, Guenther F.; Türk, Alexander --- "The Role of Implementing Committees" [2007] ELECD 181; in Christiansen, Thomas; Larsson, Torbjörn (eds), "The Role of Committees in the Policy-Process of the European Union" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: The Role of Committees in the Policy-Process of the European Union

Editor(s): Christiansen, Thomas; Larsson, Torbjörn

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426224

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: The Role of Implementing Committees

Author(s): Schaefer, Guenther F.; Türk, Alexander

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

8. The role of implementing committees
Guenther F. Schaefer and Alexander Türk

INTRODUCTION
The vast majority of legal acts in the European Community are not
adopted in a procedure provided for in the EC Treaty, but by the European
Commission1 in the exercise of implementation powers conferred on it by
the Community's legislator. Most of these implementing acts are adopted by
the Commission after a so-called `comitology' committee, composed of civil
servants of the Member States, has given its opinion on a draft presented
by the Commission. Comitology committees deal with a wide variety of
activities which qualify as implementation ­ they range from single case
decisions and preparatory acts thereof at one end of the spectrum to the
amendment of basic acts at the other end. Implementing measures can be
divided into various categories (Schaefer and Türk, 2002): rule interpreta-
tion,2 rule application,3 rule-setting/rule-evaluation,4 approval of funds,5
the extension/new specification of funding programmes6 and information
management.7 It is therefore not surprising that policy implementation
covers a wide range of activities and deals with important policy issues that
go beyond the merely technical regulation of the internal market.
The practical and theoretical relevance of implementing committees in
the EU's policy process has raised considerable interest in the operation
of the comitology system. This chapter gives an account of the important
aspects of that debate. The next section will set out the constitutional
framework in which comitology committees ...