"Moving on without the Constitution"

Jacobs, Francis. (2007) "Moving on without the Constitution". In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the introduction]. The Constitution would have consolidated the EP's legislative powers, extending them, in particular, to new areas such as agriculture, and ensuring that codecision would become the normal EU legislative procedure. In the continuing absence of such a Constitution, the Parliament has not been sitting still, but has continued to be highly active in both legislative and related fields. Parliament has thus responded in three principal ways, which are all explored in the present paper. Firstly, it has sought to maximize its existing legislative powers, by playing decisive roles in areas of exceptional legislative complexity such as the Services Directive and the REACH chemicals legislation and by occasionally pushing out the frontier of existing rules such as in two recent first reading “rejections” of Commission legislative proposals. Secondly, it has also been carving out a stronger role for itself in other areas which have become of ever greater importance at a time of low legislative activity by the Commission. Among these are the legislative planning process itself, cross-cutting issues such as the Lisbon Agenda and the Sustainable Development Strategy, and also the Better Regulation Agenda (simplification, impact assessment, implementation, etc) which has been so heavily pushed by the Barroso Commission. It has forged stronger links than ever before with national parliaments. It has also been seeking to improve its own internal procedures, not least through its recently established Working Party on the Reform of EP Working Methods. Finally, the Parliament has pushed for new inter-institutional agreements (IIA's) to resolve a number of practical problems that have arisen, and to help codify existing rules. In this context, it has already reached agreement with the other institutions on important new groundrules on comitology, falling short of what is in the Constitution, but still representing a significant advance on the EP's previous powers in this area. The Parliament has also reached agreement with Commission and Council on an updated joint declaration on practical codecision procedures.

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