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

Neuhold, Christine --- "‘Glass Half Empty or Glass Half-full?’: Accountability Issues in Comitology and the Role of the European Parliament after the 2006 Reform of Comitology" [2009] ELECD 345; in Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander (eds), "Legal Challenges in EU Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Legal Challenges in EU Administrative Law

Editor(s): Hofmann, C.H. Herwig; Türk, H. Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847207883

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: ‘Glass Half Empty or Glass Half-full?’: Accountability Issues in Comitology and the Role of the European Parliament after the 2006 Reform of Comitology

Author(s): Neuhold, Christine

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

3. `Glass half empty or glass half-full?':
accountability issues in comitology
and the role of the European
Parliament after the 2006 reform of
comitology1
Christine Neuhold

1. INTRODUCTION

Ever since the 1960s, the European Commission has played a major role
as regulator in the process of implementing European legislation. Just
looking at the most recent figures on implementing measures one will find
that the Commission adopted more than 2500 such legal acts per year. As
is well known, the Commission is not alone in this domain of regulating
the implementing process, but is assisted and controlled by `comitol-
ogy' committees composed of civil servants from the administrations
of the Member States. The system has been under pressure for reform
almost from its inception. Especially the European Parliament (EP) has
been highly critical of the complex system and of ­ as it claimed ­ the
undemocratic procedures involving two levels of bureaucrats who, to
make matters worse, can under certain circumstances refer measures to the
Council (European Parliament (EP), 1961). One has to note that the call
for reform of the system, notably from the EP but also from the European
Commission, has not been unheard: first it was reformed in 1999 and just
recently in 2006.
In this context, a new regulatory procedure has been agreed upon,
which from the side of the EP is described as `a huge breakthrough in par-
liamentary control over EU legislation' and as `improving accountability



1
An earlier version of this chapter was published in ...