The European Parliament and Delegated Legislation: An Institutional Balance Perspective

Description

This book revisits the Treaty of Lisbon’s promise to further parliamentarise the EU’s functioning by looking into the Treaty-law framework governing the delegation of legislative power in the EU. In this field, the Lisbon Treaty formally greatly strengthened the position of the European Parliament vis-à-vis both the European Commission and the Council. The book explores whether Parliament’s formally reinforced role is reflected in the actual balance of powers in the area of delegated legislation and executive rule-making. It does so by assessing how both the law and practice of decision-making at the legislative level, looking at specific case studies, and the sub-legislative level, examining the scrutiny over delegated legislation, has crystallised in the ten years following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. This rigorous study gives a fascinating insight into one of the most significant developments in European parliamentary law-making, which EU constitutional lawyers will find required reading. Volume 8 in the series Parliamentary Democracy in Europe Contents Table of Cases List of Figures List of Tables 1. Introduction I. A Primer: Operationalising Institutional Balance as a Yardstick for Assessing Institutional Developments II. Structure of the Enquiry 2. A Formal Reading of the Lisbon Treaty I. The Formal Catalogue of Acts II. The Lisbon Treaty's 'Atypical' Acts III. The Distinction between Delegated and Implementing Acts: A Cursory Reading of the TFEU IV. Parliamentary Control Over Post-Lisbon Executive Acts 3. The Road Leading Up to the Lisbon Treaty I. Comitology's Origins and Original Sin II. Judicial Sanctioning of Comitology and the Commission's Broad Implementing Powers III. From the Single European Act to the 2006 Revision of the Second Comitology Decision IV. A Recalibrated Institutional Balance 4. The Exponential Multiplication of Delimitation Problems I. Delimitation of Autonomous Executive Acts against (Delegated) Legislation and Implementation II. Delimitation of Legislation and Delegation III. Delimitation of Delegated and Implementing Acts 5. Delegated Power: Further Limits and Procedure I. The Passive Personal Scope of Article 290 TFEU II. Breaking Down the Specificity Requirement III. Testing Specificity in Practice IV. Procedural Limits to the Exercise of Delegated Powers 6. Implementing Power: Triggering Factors, Nature, Extent and Procedure I. The Notion of Uniform Conditions II. Reconceptualising Implementing Powers Post-Lisbon III. Exceptional Implementation by the Council IV. The (not so) Closed List of Implementing Actors and Implementing Acts V. The Comitology Procedures VI. No Self-Love, the 2017 Proposal to Amend the Comitology Regulation 7. The Practice and Politics of Delegated Legislation I. Strategies in Delegating Powers II. General Data Protection Regulation III. Data Governance Act IV. Refining the Model 8. Conclusion I. Looking Back II. … to Move Forward Annex: Overview of Autonomous Executive Legal Bases Index