Comitology is the most important form of multi-level governance in the EU. Member State and Commission actors together create roughly 2,500 executive acts per year amounting to half of all European laws. Using new European and national data, this books argues that its accountability has improved over time, but that unexpected gaps have emerged.

Every year the EU Commission issues thousands of rules based on powers delegated by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. But delegation is carefully controlled. Traditionally, control has been exerted through a system of committees of member state representatives ('comitology'). However, this system was contested by the European Parliament which was left without any influence. The Lisbon Treaty introduced a new control regime for delegated powers, the so-called delegated acts system, which was meant to supplement the existing system. The new system involves direct control by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament and thus for the first time gave the European Parliament real influence over delegated powers. However, the choice over which delegation regime to use in practice has turned into one of the most vehement institutional conflicts in the EU political system. This book represents the first comprehensive investigation of this conflict. It does so by a combination of methods and data, including process-tracing of the introduction of the new system in the Lisbon Treaty, case studies of selected post-Lisbon delegation situations, and statistical analysis of datasets comprising hundreds of post-Lisbon legislative files.

This Handbook introduces the institutions, organisations and policy processes that make up EU public administration, including those that typically operate beneath the surface, and critically reviews the state of the art in research. Paying close attention to the multi-level nature of EU governance, it is a vital resource for graduate and postgraduate students in the disciplines of European studies, political science and EU law. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

EU law consists of several thousand acts of which the overwhelming majority are made by the Commission. The Commission is controlled by comitology, a system of committees of member state representatives that are consulted when new acts are proposed. This book looks at why the system was created, how it functions and how it has evolved.

This book first provides a critical analysis of the legal framework that governs the delegation of rulemaking powers to the European Commission. Second, it explores how the framework that governs such a delegation of powers to the Commission operates in the food and health policy domain.

Since its formation, the European Union has expanded beyond all expectations; this seems set to continue as more countries seek accession and the scope of EU law expands, touching more and more aspects of its citizens' lives. The EU has never been stronger and yet it now appears to be reaching a crisis point, beset on all sides by conflict and challenges to its legitimacy. Nationalist sentiment is on the rise and the Eurozone crisis has had a deep and lasting impact. The European Union has the complexity and depth of a mature legal system, albeit one which is constantly in flux and whose content and foundations are constantly contested. Its law has developed beyond the single market and institutional matters into many other fields including environmental, fiscal, labour, immigration and criminal law. It is studied at undergraduate and postgraduate level throughout the Member States and beyond; an understanding of it is essential to those who study the EU from other disciplinary perspectives as well as to legal practitioners and policy-makers. The Oxford Handbook of European Union Law comprises eight sections examining how we are to conceptualise EU law; the architecture of EU law; making and administering EU law; the economic constitution and the citizen; regulation of the market place; economic, monetary and fiscal union; the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice; and what lies beyond the regulatory state. Each chapter summarises, analyses and reflects on the state of play in a given area, and suggests how it is likely to develop in the foreseeable future. The resulting collection provides a vivid and provocative tapestry which will be widely used both inside and outside academia by those who are interested in the law underpinning the EU and its policies.

This book assesses the many changes that have occurred within the European Parliament and in its external relations since the Lisbon treaty (2009) and the last European elections (2014). It is undoubtedly the institution that has evolved the most since the 1950s. Despite the many crises experienced by European integration in the last years, the Parliament is still undergoing important changes in its formal competences, its influence on policy-making, its relations with other EU institutions, its internal organisation and its internal political dynamics. Every contribution deals with the most recent aspects of these evolutions and addresses overlooked topics, providing an overview of the current state of play which challenges the mainstream intergovernmental approach of the EU. This project results from research conducted at the Department of European Political and Governance Studies of the College of Europe. Individual research of several policy analysts of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) have contributed to this endeavour.