Abstract
This paper aims to analyse these new rules introduced by the EC. The purpose is to evaluate whether or not these changes have altered the original institutional design significantly and to assess its impact on the “Community method”, in other words on the EC prerogative to initiate the law-making machinery.
Highlights
This paper aims to analyse these new rules introduced by the European Commission (EC)
The legislative mechanism built into the Treaty foresees the right conferred upon the European Commission (EC) to initiate the legislative process, i.e. to assess, elaborate and propose those pieces of legislation deemed to be needed in order to achieve the political objectives incorporated in the Treaties establishing the European Union
This unique mechanism whereby is conferred upon an executive organ the monopoly to start a procedure which should generally lead to the adoption of a legislative act decided on by another organ seems, in recent years, to have been somehow altered mainly by a series of administrative decisions taken by the EC itself
Summary
The rules describing the procedure leading to the adoption of the EU legal texts (directives, regulations, decisions) are laid down in the Treaties of the European Union. 114 nowadays considering that the smaller Member States are not sufficiently represented in the EP1 to be able to effectively defend their interests This unique mechanism whereby is conferred upon an executive organ (i.e. the EC) the monopoly to start a procedure which should generally lead to the adoption of a legislative act decided on by another organ (the Council jointly – after the modification introduced to the original text – with the EP) seems, in recent years, to have been somehow altered mainly by a series of administrative decisions taken by the EC itself. The EP enjoys a ‘right of initiative’, which consists of being able to ‘ask the Commission’ to submit a proposal This possibility has existed since the Maastricht treaty and was confirmed in the Lisbon treaty, with an addendum requiring the Commission to give reasons for its decision if it does adhere to such a request[3]. We will try to draw some conclusions as regards the possible consequences of this adaptation to the scheme which was devised when the European Community (nowadays the European Union) was set up in 1957
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