EU takes a step towards greater accountability

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in ft.com on Wed 19th Jul 2006

Despite constitutional squalls, the European Union continues to steadily expand the scope of its internal market. It is the job of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, as joint legislators, to establish the appropriate regulatory framework for the management of the market place.

This regulation, like the current REACH directive on the registration, evaluation and assessment of chemicals, is usually complex and the legislation behind it technically detailed. Law making can be heavy going for those MEPs who are neither scientists nor lawyers. Parliament lacks the technical resources of the US Congress, and its in-house expertise in drafting law is less developed than that of Europe's older, national parliaments.

The recent enlargement of the Union has helped to bring a new focus on how each member state will apply EU regulation in practice. More attention is being paid to the need to improve the quality of regulation, and, where possible, to reduce its quantity. Systematic impact assessments are now carried out by the European Commission as it formulates draft laws. The Council is under pressure to stipulate more fully how each member state intends to transpose EU framework law into the domestic context. National parliaments are expected to assess more carefully how draft EU law respects the principle of subsidiarity.

The Commission is responsible for overseeing the implementation of EU acts. To help it do this, it presides over some 250 committees made up of national civil servants - the 'comitology' procedure. A number of these committees are merely advisory; others manage EU spending programmes and common policies; others - 'regulatory committees' - actually have the power to block the Commission's implementing measures and to refer the matter back to Council.

MEPs have long sought to put themselves on an equal footing with Council in respect of those implementing measures which stem from law passed by co-decision between the two legislative chambers. Predictably, this was a big issue in the constitutional negotiations of 2002-04, where the Commission was successful in introducing a specific category of delegated legislation on condition that Parliament gained the power to call in the whole delegated authority. Meanwhile, MEPs' frustration with the current state of affairs led them to introduce 'sunset clauses' into controversial legislation in the financial services sector.

In the absence so far of the Constitution, more modest but very important progress has been made. An inter-institutional agreement was reached earlier this month which introduces a new scrutiny procedure for executive measures of general scope, amending non-essential elements of EU directives or regulations. Henceforward Parliament will be able to block the adoption of any quasi-legislative implementing measure to which it objects. Grounds for objection are that the Commission exceeds its delegated power as laid down in the original act, that the draft measure is incompatible with the aim or content of the act, or that the Commission fails to respect the principles of subsidiarity or proportionality. Faced with such an objection from either Council or Parliament, the Commission will have to amend its draft measure or go back to the legislative drawing board.

The new agreement represents a large advance in making EU affairs democratically accountable. It is a further sign of the recent constitutional development of the Parliament, which must now learn to use its greater scrutiny powers efficaciously. Twenty-five existing laws, mainly relating to financial services, will be urgently adapted to the new comitology procedure: others will follow.

Both Commission and Council deserve credit for having closed the chapter on comitology. The reform not only builds up the scrutiny powers of Parliament but also liberates MEPs from having to deal with burdensome technical minutiae in primary legislation. Both Council and Parliament should now focus on the essential political choices in legislation, entrusting executive authority to the Commission.

The out-going Austrian presidency of the Council also wins praise for having advanced the cause of transparency. The June European Council decided, at last, to let the cameras into the Council chamber when it acts in its legislative capacity. This reform will be reinforced by the Constitution but can be introduced meanwhile by changing the Council's own rules of procedure. Such openness should help national parliaments, in particular, keep check on what their ministers are up to in Brussels. The new Finnish presidency can be expected to deliver these promises in the autumn.