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New Rules on Comitology Proposed

By Bartolus

The Commission has made a proposal to the Council and European Parliament - COM (2010) 83 final - to reform the "comitology" procedure.

The proposal seeks to implement Article 291 TFEU that lays down that the European Parliament and the Council, acting by means of regulations in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt in advance the rules and general principles concerning mechanisms for control by member States of the Commission's exercise of implementing powers. If adopted, the new measure will replace Council Decision 1999/468/EC.

Instead of having four different procedures (the advisory, the management, the regulatory and the regulatory with scrutiny procedures) as now, the proposal suggests that there be only two: The advisory procedure, like the existing advisory procedure, and a new "examination" procedure, to replace the management and regulatory procedures (Articles 4 and 5).

According to the proposal, the advisory procedure will be the default procedure can be applied to all policy domains and for all types of binding implementing measures (Article 2(3)) whereas the examination procedure would only be used when certain binding criteria are met (Article 2(2)).

The proposed examination procedure would work as follows:
- Where the Committee delivers a negative opinion on the draft measures, the Commission could not adopt them. The Commission can re-submit the draft to the committee for reconsideration, or table an amended draft. In very exceptional circumstances, the Commission would be able to adopt the draft measures despite a negative opinion but in such a case the committee would have the last word within a time-period which will not exceed one month;
- Where the committee reaches no opinion, the Commission could ultimately decide whether to adopt the measures or not.
- If the committee gives a positive opinion, the Commission would adopt the measures unless exceptional circumstances or new facts would justify them not being adopted.

Under the examination procedure, the committee itself would be able to prevent the adoption of the draft measures by the Commission if a qualified majority of member States were against.

For a previous post on comitology, look here.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on April 27, 2010 (boomark / email).