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European Union has faced a various challenge that have threatened the European integrative project as a whole. More recently, The- so called- Corona virus pandemic as a health crisis in 2020 has presented several challenges in terms of health, humanitarian and political issues between European countries and the world as a whole. This crisis, which is considered a health crisis, but its effects extended to the political relations between the European nations within the framework of European integration. In light of the pandemic and in the context of the globalization of risks. The European institutions were demanded to save the European health security, especially after the huge human losses it caused. In this crisis proved that the self-help system is the best option to confront the pandemic nationally. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the effects of the Corona virus crisis on European regional integration focusing on the European response to the crisis and its implications for the future of the European integrated project as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of judicial comity is an essential yardstick in matters of international jurisdiction. Within unilateral jurisdictional systems, however, sovereign states tend to be cautious when reconsidering judicial comity. Nevertheless, strong comity within such systems can mean that different unilateral systems--at least to some extent--de facto intertwine, enhancing the proper functioning of each unilateral system in the international sphere. Since the territorial scope of consumer protection provisions has been broadened in the Brussels 1 Recast, this Regulation increasingly intervenes with third-state jurisdictional systems in matters of consumer protection. This gives rise to the question of M'hether the principle of comity has been properly respected in the Brussels I Recast. This question is addressed in this article from the perspective of consumer protection in the Brussels I Recast and its interface with third states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lisbon Treaty changed the system of delegating executive powers to the European Commission: it introduced the delegated acts system as an alternative to comitology, which continues to exist in parallel. This new system allocates veto power to the European Parliament and the Council, in which Member State expert groups are consulted without having a formal vote. The Council fears that the absence of formal voting will tempt the Commission to ignore Member State input in the expert groups. This article investigates to what degree this fear is justified. To what degree do formal voting rights affect the consultation of Member State experts? On the basis of interviews with Member State experts who participate both in expert groups as well as in comitology committees, we demonstrate how consultation patterns differ between the two settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines those factors that influence the issuance of reasoned opinions within the European Union’s ‘Early Warning System’. It is posited that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism results in the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This expectation is tested using data derived from the European Parliament, the Commission’s platform for European Union Interparliamentary Exchange, and longitudinal data from the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism is associated with the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This study has important implications for our understandings of policy processes, political responsiveness, and democratic governance in the European Union and its member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many things have changed in Turkey within the last decade, but also in Brussels as to the political practises. This commentary seeks to answer whether Turkey and the EU can find and maintain a sensible balance between toughness and empathy, between considerations of hard power and soft power. Turkey is obviously an essential, regional player both economically and militarily. Geopolitics may not appear high on the agenda of the EU, but the situation in the Middle-East simply could not and cannot be ignored as a geopolitical challenge, one that might beg for acting in concert with Turkey. On the other side, Europe represents an attraction and example based on a long history and struggle for material wealth, technological and scientific progress as well as for the accomplished degree of democracy and the rule of law. More recently, however, EU soft power suffers a number of setbacks. We disown our most basic values of soft power and will lose impact in promoting a just, democratic order in the world. If the EU and its member states fail to recover from this set-back, we risk to fall back in the hard power game, also with potential and aspiring states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most European Union rules are made by the Commission, not the Council of Ministers or the European Parliament. But although the Commission is an important rule-maker, it is not autonomous. The member states have always taken care to install committees to control the Commission (comitology). However, the Lisbon Treaty introduced alternative control mechanisms (delegated acts) and a reform of the comitology system (implementing acts). This article investigates how the post-Lisbon control system works in daily legislative practice. It represents the first investigation of the institutional preferences of the Council, the Parliament and the Commission in the new system. Further, it utilizes better data than previous studies. The analysis is based on data on the control preferences of all actors before the first trilogue meeting for a large number of cases in the period 2010–13. The results indicate that the institutional battle over the control of delegated rule-making is far from over. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European studies represent the field which is facing a number of challenges, among them the intellectual and professional are the key ones. Today the European studies develop under pressure of globalization that causes a new scholarly rational. The question is if the European studies in the EaP countries can contribute to a better understanding of the globalization challenges and to reflecting on the societal values. The basic idea of this research presented in the paper is that, although there are various approaches, goals and objectives of the European studies in EU and beyond, the subject is developing and is crucial for the development of the societies of the EU and EaP neighboring countries. The comparative study with regional endeavor attempted would allow for a better understanding of the European experience in the field of higher education in the present region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies demoi-cracy as the most robust category for understanding the European Union, and three tasks are undertaken to contribute towards this conceptualisation. First, it is explained how demoi-cracy differs from other popular categories that have been used to describe the EU and why it stands out as the most accurate. Second, contrary to the view that places demoi-cracy in contrast to political systems existing with a singular demos, it is argued that this concept is best understood as being capable of capturing cases where a weaker demos exists alongside strong sovereign demoi. Finally, the idea of demoi-cracy is broken into two further concepts (deep diversity and dual compound regime) and elaborated upon at length with a view to further specifying the nature of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the problems of EU risk regulation of genetically modified organisms ( GMOs) through the lens of deliberative theories of EU law and governance, such as deliberative supranationalism and experimentalist governance. Previous research had suggested that the GMO issue is not conductive to deliberation within EU institutions because of its high politicisation. This article argues that another equally salient factor is the scientification of the GMO authorisation process. Scientification stands for the Commission's overreliance on epistemic legitimacy as the basis for risk management. Given the deadlock of comitology in this field, scientification is exacerbated by a reversion to top-down regulation by the Commission. As a result, political responsibility for GMO authorisations gets lost. This article argues that both scientification and politicisation are mutually accelerative processes ultimately leading to a break down of dialogue at the EU level. This contradicts the assumption that deliberation is fostered by technocratic 'behind closed door' decision-making. In the GMO case, the top-down imposition of epistemic authority has only increased politicisation contributing to the de-legitimation of all EU institutions involved in GMO regulation. The recent EU reform on national opt-outs is not sufficient to address this problem. A successful reform should mitigate the negative effects of both politicisation and scientification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 18 of March 2014, the Court of Justice delivered its judgment in the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) fees case,1 the first case dealing with the problematic distinction, in practice, between delegated acts under Article 290 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and implementing acts under Article 291 TFEU. The significance of this case should be searched for in the fundamental changes brought to the hierarchy of norms and the EU's revamped arsenal of acts after the Lisbon Treaty. These changes will first be recalled before presenting the case itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We formulate a game-theoretical model of closed rule legislation in the presence of informational asymmetries. In the model an agenda setter with private information proposes a policy to a legislature. The legislature appoints an oversight committee to monitor the agenda setter. We study the rationale for this appointment, and analyze the equilibrium oversight committee member choices for the legislators. We conclude that it is optimal for the legislators to appoint oversight committee members who are as far from them as is the agenda setter, but in the opposite direction, rather than do the monitoring themselves. The appointment of such oversight committee members represents a credible means for the legislators to commit to reject proposals that they only marginally prefer to the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comitology is an important part of the EU’s regulatory framework. Hence, lobbying by outside interests is to be expected. However, lobbying in the comitology system has received almost no scholarly attention. This paper provides the first understanding of the subject by analysing the access of business interests to actors in the comitology system. The analysis is designed as a most likely study of two cases, aviation safety and CO2quotas. Based on Bouwen’s rationalist theory of access goods, the empirical analysis shows that lobbying is prevalent, especially by sectoral interests providing expert knowledge and targeted mainly at the Commission, but also at the member states in the comitology committees, and the European Parliament. The case studies therefore indicate that lobbying is widespread in the comitology system and important to study in order to understand the outputs from this part of the EU political system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Lisbon Treaty reform provided an important innovation in the EU regulatory activity by differentiating between the legislative delegation (art. 290 TFEU) and the executive delegation (art. 291 TFEU). In so doing, the central role of the European Commission in the Comitology procedures as well as the power of the European Parliament and the Council to control its executive powers have been modified. The new 2011 Comitology Regulation aimed at creating a more intelligible and transparent committees' system where the EC is expected to act in a stricter framework. The paper argues that the new Regulation preserves the efficiency of the Comitology system; at the same time, however, it does not really improve the level of transparency and clarity in the way in which the committees' procedures works. Moreover, as the practice clearly shows, the EC continues to enjoy a broad discretion in the adoption of implementing acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution revisits the question of the alleged consensual and deliberative nature of comitology proceedings on new conceptual and empirical bases. On the conceptual plane, we argue that it is important to separate the analysis of decision-making from that of outcomes: the fact that committees generally end up ratifying Commission proposals does not mean the latter are never contested. Consensus and deliberation being closely related concepts, we propose to focus on dissent within committees, which we regard as an indicator of a non-deliberative process or an imperfect deliberation. Applying this approach to data from the comitology register, we show the existence of a sizeable rate of contestation in various fields, and offer a first analysis of the factors that may influence dissensus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the British court case Spiliada Maritime Corporation v. Cansulex Ltd., which dealt with doctrine of forum non conveniens. Topics include the discretionary staying of proceedings, judicial pronouncements of jurisdiction, and how the doctrine became part of the comity of nations.

In this judgment, the General Court annulled two Commission decisions authorising the placing on the market of the GM potato Amflora. The Court did not base its decision on the arguments put forward by the applicant Hungary, which contested the underlying scientific assessment of the European Food Safety Authority, but found of its own motion a breach of an essential procedural requirement in the applicable comitology procedure. Whilst the Court's proactive role in scrutinising the Commission's behaviour in the authorisation procedure of GMOs is to be welcomed, the Court arguably missed an opportunity to exercise its role as a deliberative forum for normative controversies underlying the scientific risk assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies show that the EU institutions have strong preferences with regard to the design of the EU comitology system which, consequently, is the result of intense inter-institutional negotiations. However, the exact choice of comitology procedure to install in a given legislative proposal has received much less scholarly attention. Based on a behavioural logic of control maximization, this article investigates the comitology preferences of the Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament in the legislative process. The findings from an analysis of all new directives and regulations in the years 1999-2006, a total of 686 acts, show that the Council seeks strict comitology control while the Commission and the Parliament both seek permissive control. This holds even though the legislative process is characterized by a high degree of agreement on comitology. The analysis indicates that this is because the actors strategically anticipate each other's preferences, not because there is a true alignment of preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission has built up an extensive system of expert committees over the last two decades, and reliance on these groups has become an indispensable part of EU public policy. Recent work on expert groups’ distribution across policy fields, composition, institutional features and role in the policy process attests to their significance. The likely effects of expert group involvement, however, are largely unexplored. This paper examines how involvement of expert groups empowers the Commission vis-à-vis member states. It looks at the Commission’s involvement of and learning from an expert group within the management of Europe’s first programme on technologies for the Information Society. Programme management was regulated by a comitology committee, which helps to identify the conditions under which a sidelining of member states may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on several changes made to the comitology and existing empirical material on the authorisation decisions of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by the European Commission. It argues that the extent of the politicisation of the GMO authorisation process is not expected to change. It tackles the reduced decision making cost logic which recognizes the delegation's functional need, citing the case of the comitology system in the 1960s.

With and after the Lisbon Treaty Comitology experienced a surprisingly radical reform of which the winner seems to be the Commission. Most observers, however, expect the ECJ to draw a difficult line between Art. 290 and 291 TFEU. The question is why such a radical reform on treaty level was possible at all while the reform of comitology rules on a lower level turned out to be so little radical. In answering this question, rational-choice explanations conceptualizing community institutions and Member States as fully rational actors do not get very far while approaches including cultural factors and unintended consequences explain a lot more. Yet the puzzle remains how the introduction of delegated legislation including at least a partial abolition of comitology could survive two intergovernmental conferences without being withdrawn by the Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can legislators derive the benefits of delegation without unduly empowering the executive? This article investigates how this dilemma is met in the European Union (EU) political system where executive power is delegated to the Commission. The argument is that the European member states have found a unique solution. They install committees of member state representatives to monitor the EU Commission, the so-called comitology committees. However, the extent to which comitology committees are installed and their exact competence vary considerably across policy areas. This article uses a delegation perspective to understand this variation. An analysis of comitology provisions in 686 directives and regulations shows that institutional conflict and issue complexity, well-known factors from the delegation literature, are important predictors of comitology control of the Commission. The findings support one of the two prevailing images of comitology-comitology as a control mechanism, not deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of comitology-the system of implementation committees that control the Commission in the execution of delegated powers-has been characterised by institutional tensions. The crux of these tensions has often been the role of the European Parliament and its quest to be granted powers equal to those of the Council. This process came to a head with the 2006 Comitology reform and the introduction of the regulatory procedure with scrutiny ( RPS). After just over three years of experience with the RPS procedure, the Treaty of Lisbon has made it redundant through the creation of Delegated Acts ( Article 290 TFEU). This article aims to evaluate the practical implications that Delegated Acts will entail for the Parliament, principally by using the experience with the RPS to better understand the challenges ahead. This analysis will be of interest to those following the study of comitology, formal and informal inter-institutional relations and also to practitioners who will have to work with Delegated Acts in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-Lisbon Treaty institutional mechanism of the European Union has been significantly altered by the introduction of a formal hierarchy of legal acts. This article outlines some very important, unanswered questions for the future institutional setting of the Union and the distribution of powers. It is argued that the European Commission is likely to enjoy substantial discretion in delegated law-making. This loss of control by member states over the adoption of delegated acts is not compensated for by other adequate mechanisms for ensuring accountability. In addition, the European Commission has been successfully positioning itself to diminish the influence of comitology committees on the adoption of implementing acts. The possible outcomes of this new institutional shift are analysed in the context of the new challenges to the Community method. Some important implications of this institutional shift for the debate on the democratic deficit in the European Union are also drawn up. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The reform of the EU comitology system, enacted with Regulation 182/11, had the effect of extending the general principles regulating the Commission's exercise of implementing powers to the trade defence instruments' (TDIs) procedures, which, before the reform, were regulated by an autonomous discipline. This article offers an overview of the modifications brought about to TDI's comitology by Reg. 182/11 and identifies the possible consequences of the new discipline. The analysis benefited from the results of an empirical simulation, consisting in the application of the new voting methodology to past procedures of TDIs. The authors conclude, among the others, that the new system will likely reduce the usual political interferences in the Commission activities regarding TDIs, and it will settle a number of shortcomings of the old system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of comitology and the introduction of the new instrument of delegated acts in the Lisbon Treaty were followed by protracted negotiations on the implementation of both articles. This article examines the resultant system that has emerged for both types of non-legislative instruments. In the area of implementing acts, a new regulation sets out important changes: a reduction in the number of procedures, the extension of the scope to trade defence measures and the replacement of a referral to the Council with a new appeal committee. With respect to delegated acts, the search for an overarching framework resulted in a Common Understanding. Our analysis not only demonstrates the need to go beyond the treaty provisions in understanding the nature of non-legislative rule making in the EU, but also emphasises the importance of informal procedures and non-binding agreements in fully assessing the nature of non-legislative rule making in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact assessment ( IA) has gone from an innocuous technical tool typically used in the pre-legislative phase to an instrument at the heart of the European institutional machinery. However-in deviation from its roots as a tool governing delegated rulemaking in the US-most experience with IA in the EU has been gathered in a legislative context. Against the background of the recent evolution of the EU's old 'comitology' system into a two-track system of delegated acts and implementing measures, this contribution discusses in three parts the 'whys,' 'whats' and 'hows' of extending IA to 'non-legislative rulemaking.' It explores various aspects of the rulemaking process that IA-if properly applied-could strengthen: consultation, control and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how changes of powers in the inter-institutional balance have affected the willingness of the Commission and the Council to delegate legislative power to comitology committees. Starting from the assumption that actors seek to maximize their institutional power in order to increase their influence over policy outcomes, we argue that changes of institutional rules affect their willingness to adopt legislation through comitology procedures. We examine the effects of the introduction of the 1999 comitology decision, which increased the competences of the Commission in the comitology procedure by abolishing the ‘double safety net’. We show that the Commission has proposed delegation to management and regulatory committees more extensively since the adoption of this decision. Surprisingly, the Council – which saw its own competences reduced by the decision – did not put up significant resistance to the more frequent use of delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Parliament is frequently seen as the 'big winner' of the Lisbon Treaty, given the fact that several changes have significantly extended its powers, such as the extension of co-decision as the ordinary legislative procedure, and the introduction of the assent procedure to international agreements. The reform of comitology (Article 291) and the introduction of the new instrument of delegated acts (Article 290) are generally seen in the same light, marking the culmination of a long-standing quest of the EP to gain equal rights to the Council in this area. This article questions the view that the Parliament has had unconditional 'success' by examining in detail the way the new provisions have been implemented. It argues that Member States in the Council managed to claw back influence on delegated powers through the manner that the new treaty articles have been put into practice. We identify the EP's timing and selective attention with regard to this domain as the main explanations for this outcome. Our analysis demonstrates the need to study the actual implementation of treaty provisions before coming to a conclusion about the identity of 'winners' and 'losers' of treaty reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Lisbon Treaty represented a rare opportunity to redesign parliamentary control of the European Commission's delegated powers. The new Treaty distinguishes between delegated and implementing acts and specifies that comitology rules must be decided by a co-decision regulation. This necessitated a reform of the comitology system, which was decided in December 2010 after protracted inter-institutional negotiations. This article asks why the new control system took its final form. The negotiations as a game of control positions are analyzed and the course of the negotiations is traced through documents and interviews. Support is found for the article's hypotheses, but it is also the case that events in some respects went further than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of European Regulatory Networks (ERNs) has been presented as a way to promote the uniform implementation of EU law in a range of issue areas. This article argues that the level of co-ordination achieved in ERNs crucially depends on the level of interdependence between Member State authorities in a given issue area. Drawing on a survey among national representatives in two ERNs and a set of in-depth interviews, it shows that both the uniformity of implementation and the use of common purpose as a way to reach co-ordination are strongly associated with the perceived level of interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comitology regime, the committee-based system developed as a mechanism for controlling the Commission's exercise of its powers to implement EU measures, has been subject to severe criticism on grounds of lack of accountability and transparency. The system has recently been fundamentally reformed by means of the new Implementing Acts Regulation, which came into force on 1 March 2011. This paper investigates whether the new rules are sufficient to remedy accountability deficits as regards implementing acts and concludes that as far as accountability to the Member States is concerned, their control powers have remained static. In addition, the new-delegated acts procedure introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon grants the European Parliament (EP) more control powers, although the EP's gains are more modest than they might appear. This change has come at the cost of reduced control powers for Member States as well as lowered standards of transparency for the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comitology procedures have been an integral part of the European Union legislative decision-making process. The negotiation of the legal framework of the comitology procedures, as well as the administrative practice of the European Commission in drafting implementing acts, is relevant to the legal research on the evolution of European integration. This article studies the dynamic relationship between the process of regulation and implementation of comitology procedures, and the process of parliamentarisation of the European Communities and later of the European Union. Two hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis claims that there is a clear causal link between the use of newly acquired budgetary and legislative powers of the European Parliament, and the limitation of control by Member States on the Commission by the comitology committees. The second hypothesis claims that a weak system interaction exists between the notion of parliamentarisation and the reform of the comitology system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authorities regularly have to cross swords with businesses on the issue as to whether a given substance has been completely recovered in order to escape the Caudine Forks of waste law. So far, it has been settled case law that national lawmakers could not adopt a definition of the notion of waste that would exclude objects and substances capable of commercial re-use. However, economic operators consider that the relatively broad definition of waste under Union law does not embrace all of the special features of their economic activities. By adopting the new Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, the EU lawmaker sought to tailor the Directive's scope in the best possible manner, in particular in providing for new arrangements under which certain classes of waste cease to be classified as such. In effect, in virtue of its Article 6 (1) and (2), certain specified waste shall cease to be waste when it has undergone a recovery operation and complies with specific criteria. Such criteria should be set for specific materials by the Commission in comitology. In this connection, the Council adopted Regulation (EU) No. 333/2011 on certain types of scrap metal which sets forth the criteria which make it possible to determine the time when certain types of scrap metal-iron, steel and aluminium-cease to be waste within the meaning of Directive 2008/98/EC where such scrap is intended for the metal production in steelworks, foundries and aluminium refiners. It is the aim of this article to explore some of the questions that the first regulation to implement Article 6 of the Directive is likely to raise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings classic constitutionalism to an analysis of delegated legislation in the European Union. To facilitate such a constitutional analysis, it starts with a comparative excursion introducing the judicial and political safeguards on executive legislation in American constitutionalism. In the European legal order, similar constitutional safeguards emerged in the last fifty years. First, the Court of Justice developed judicial safeguards in the form of a European non-delegation doctrine. Second, the European legislator has also insisted on political safeguards within delegated legislation. Under the Rome Treaty, 'comitology' was the defining characteristic of executive legislation. The Lisbon Treaty represents a revolutionary restructuring of the regulatory process. The (old) Community regime for delegated legislation is split into two halves. Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) henceforth governs delegations of legislative power, while Article 291 TFEU establishes the constitutional regime for delegations of executive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a recently adopted European Union (EU) Directive that, from 1 January 2013, will gradually introduce important changes to the EU regulatory framework on cross-border mutual assistance in the assessment of taxes. The new Directive broadens the scope of mutual assistance and improves its efficiency, notably as regards information exchange on request and automatic exchange of information. It also introduces comitology for the first time in the area of direct taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lisbon Treaty introduces a distinction between legislative, delegated and implementation acts and thus represents a new approach to delegated decision-making in the EU. This will lead to a reform of the comitology system. Against this background this contribution takes stock. What do we know about the comitology system? Can the existing literature help us understand the post-Lisbon changes? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to reveal the institutional interests of the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the Commission in the comitology system. This is done by an investigation of the 2006 comitology reform, which introduced the regulatory procedure with scrutiny. This reform was the result of developments in four areas: the Lamfalussy reform in the area of financial regulation; the controversial use of comitology in the area of GMOs, food safety and the environment; the failed Constitutional Treaty; and the amending of the 1999 comitology decision. The analysis shows that the reform was the result of a two-dimensional constitutional struggle. The first dimension concerns the relative supervisory position of the two legislative actors, the Council and the European Parliament. The second dimension concerns the relationship between the legislative and the executive branch of the EU system. In theoretical terms, the analysis demonstrates an example of T.M. Moe's 'politics of structural choice'. The paper ends by drawing lessons for the negotiations on the new comitology system following the Lisbon Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) promises to involve a broad range of actors, including members of national parliaments. Several scholars showed that the OMC breaks this promise by affecting the national policy-making process outside of the control of national parliaments. However, this finding can be called into question; scholars drew heavily on anecdotal evidence and did not take sufficiently into account differences between OMCs and member states. This article empirically investigates the use of three OMCs by parliamentarians in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to assess the performance of national policies related to the knowledge-based society theme. It will be shown that the use of information from OMCs by parliamentarians is dependent on the information provided by the government on the policies OMCs touch upon and the presence of simple benchmarks in an OMC. Moreover, parliamentarians in a consensus democracy use the OMC more frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effects of Eastern enlargement on EU trade policy-making. On interest constellation, the article makes a case that protectionist forces have been strengthened relative to liberal forces. This slight protectionist turn is mostly witnessed in the area of anti-dumping and with respect to the Doha trade round. On preference aggregation, guided by a principal-agent framework, it is argued that the growth in the number of actors (principals and interest groups) has not constrained the role of the European Commission (agent). However, it has led to an increase in informal processes and has empowered large trading nations vis-a-vis smaller and less 'comitology-experienced' member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the role of regions in the EU policy process concentrate mainly on policy formulation and implementation of regional funds. In this article, we redress this bias by investigating the formal role of subnational authorities in the implementation of EU regulatory policies, specifically in the transposition of directives. Subnational authorities play a secondary, but increasingly important, role in the application of these measures. Their impact is greater on environmental and social policies, as it is also on public contract legislation. More decentralized states display higher levels of subnational involvement but, in these states, regional participation in national policy-making and a high number of regional authorities decrease the likelihood of finding subnational measures of transposition. There is also more subnational involvement in states with territories that have both an elected government as well as special arrangements regulating their relations with the EU. Finally, subnational involvement tends to prolong the process of transposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the techniques of the judicial communication, which the author called hidden dialogue between the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the national Constitutional Courts of the European Union. The author explores the aspects of constitutional pluralism and interpretative competition. He also tackles the concept of the principle of comity in the European Union.

This article analyses to what extent comitology is an accountable form of governance. Past research related to this question exclusively focused on the formal arrangements between European institutions and the comitology committees, and showed that accountability is on the increase but still quite poorly developed. However, it took no notice of an equally important set of actors: the superiors of the committee participants working in national ministries. This article uses new survey and interview data collected among Dutch and Danish superiors of committee participants. It shows that superiors are generally able to sanction or reward the behaviour of their subordinates, but they do not actively process information and they do not often discuss the input of the committee participants. This article concludes that accountability for this multilevel governance setting is lost somewhere between the European and national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on comitology has largely ignored the European Commission's actual behaviour in the daily workings of the numerous comitology committees that were designed to control it. On the basis of survey data of Danish and Dutch representatives on nearly all comitology committees, this paper investigates the Commission's role in the system. We find that the Commission acts both as a mediator and as a policy advocate, but to varying degrees. We take a first step towards understanding this behaviour by an inspection of four arguments found in the literature on comitology and the Commission: the constraining or enabling impact of the comitology procedures; the institutional position of the responsible Directorate-General; the nature of the cases dealt with by the committees and, finally, the intensity of the member states' preferences in relation to the committees' cases. In comitology, each of these arguments shapes the mediating or the advocating behaviour of the Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article studies the institutional modifications operated by the Lisbon Treaty (2010), the priorities of the Spanish Presidency (January-June 2010) and their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two images exist of the day-to-day practice of the EU comitology system. The first claims that comitology is deliberation by policy experts in which informal norms, deliberation and good arguments matter more than economic interests and formal voting rules. The second image portrays comitology as an arena for intergovernmental bargaining designed by the Member States to control the Commission. The article systematically investigates these images based on survey evidence from a questionnaire to the Danish and Dutch national representatives on nearly all comitology committees in 2006. The evidence suggests that both images hold and that their relative importance is determined by the nature of the issues dealt with by the individual comitology committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the accountability issues concerning the comitology commission and the role of the European Parliament. It probes the question as to whether the latest Decision on Comitology alleviate the accountability deficits of comitology. It notes that the European Commission serves as a regulator in the implementation process of European legislation and is assisted by comitology committees composed of civil servants from the administrations of Member States of the European Union.

This paper examines the working of the 'Lamfalussy committees' in the banking and the securities sectors, asking whether these are 'technical' committees or 'parapolitical' ones. These committees are composed of experts (national civil servants) discussing regulatory and supervisory issues in a technical policy area — financial services. However, the issues discussed have political salience. It is argued that these committees of experts tend to be argument-based (level 2) and evidence-based (level 3), even though politics, as opposed to expertise, enter the policy process under specific circumstances. This combination of politics and expertise originates a distinctive type of informal governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]