Keeping a supervisory role

What is comitology?

Comitology is about the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers delegating implementing powers to the European Commission – but retaining a degree of supervision over what the Commission does.

It is the European equivalent of what goes on in member states when, during the course of agreeing legislation, the executive is granted powers to implement the legislation and subsequently proposes implementation measures.

In 2009, the Commission adopted 1,808 implementing measures from 266 comitology committees.

The Commission is delegated the power to initiate technical implementing measures, which it proposes to the assigned comitology committee, or the legislators, following a specified procedure. The more sensitive the measures, the more control the member states and MEPs’ control over the Commission.

Making adjustments to, or implementing, legislation through comitology can take a few months (even a matter of days, in exceptional cases) – much faster than the legislative procedures. So legislation can be updated quickly and in keeping with events, science or markets.

Comitology allows the legislators to concentrate on their core legislative work and moves technical work to technical experts – a more efficient allocation of time and tasks. The Commission drafts the measures but is assisted by member states and other sources of expertise (expert groups, EU agencies).

Scrutiny and control

In the legislative act (described as the basic act), the Commission is delegated the power to implement legislation – through either implementing or delegated acts.

The Commission must prepare the measures and present them either to the committee (implementing acts) or to the legislators (delegated acts) – which represents varying levels of scrutiny and control over the work of the Commission.

In the case of an implementing act, the committee is normally composed of representatives of each member state, chaired by the Commission, which has to adopt the Commission’s draft implementing measure by vote. Sometimes representatives of non-EU countries, EU agencies, international organisations, or individual experts are invited to attend the meetings but absent themselves for the vote.

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