The European Parliament’s Right of Scrutiny over Commission Implementing Acts: A Real Parliamentary Control?

Lintner, Pamela and Vaccari, Beatrice. (2005) The European Parliament’s Right of Scrutiny over Commission Implementing Acts: A Real Parliamentary Control? . EIPAScope 2005(1):pp. 15-25.

Abstract

Some 300 legislative acts are adopted every year by the European Parliament and the Council, or by the Council alone. Based on these acts, the European Commission adopts around 3,000 implementing acts each year, after consulting one of the 250 so-called ‘Comitology committees’ made up of representatives of the Member States. Only about 0.2% of these delegated acts are referred back to the Council because of non-agreement between the Commission and the Committee. Since the entry into force of the second Comitology decision in 1999, Parliament also has a right of scrutiny over such acts, but it has used this right in order to question the Commission’s proposals in only three cases. This paper asks whether this right of scrutiny is an appropriate way of controlling delegated rule-making. It starts with a short historical overview of Parliament’s role, before describing the current legal regulation of Parliament’s involvement in comitology procedures. It then looks in detail at the three cases in which Parliament has to date adopted a ‘Resolution’. Finally, a general assessment is made of parliamentarian control over implementing powers, with a view to contributing to the present discussion about an adequate system of delegated rule-making under the Constitutional Treaty.