Legal base	—
Document originated	15 December 2008
Deposited in Parliament	21 January 2009
Department	Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Basis of consideration	EM of 9 February 2008
Previous Committee Report	None
To be discussed in Council	n/a
Committee's assessment	Legally and politically important
Committee's decision	Clear

Background

12.1 The Commission is obliged to publish annual reports on the arcane field of the comitology law-making process. The term 'comitology' refers to the procedures under which various committees oversee the Commission's exercise of its implementing powers. These committees consist of representatives of the Member States, the Council and the European Parliament and allow them to exercise a measure of control over the exercise of delegated of powers by the Commission. There are four different comitology procedures available, which give varying degrees of control to the Council and European Parliament.

12.2 A 2006 reform of the Comitology procedure allows the European Parliament to share with the Council a right of control over the Commission's exercise of implementing measures in matters for co-decision. Before this reform, the Council alone had a say in the adoption of the implementing measure. The new Regulatory Procedure with Scrutiny (PRAC) gives the European Parliament or the Council (by QMV) the right to veto a proposal on the grounds that the particular comitology measure: (i) exceeds the implementing powers provided for in the basic instrument; (ii) is not compatible with the aim or content of the basic instrument; or (iii) does not respect the principles of subsidiarity or proportionality.

The Document

12.3 The Commission's annual report on the working of committees during 2007 was published on 15 December 2008 in accordance with the requirements in Article 7(4) of Council Decision 1999/468/EEC of 28 June 1999. The report contains general information and comments on the development of the comitology system and provides an overview of committees' activities together with detailed statistics regarding the individual comitology committees, arranged according to the different Directorates-General of the Commission.

12.4 The report comments on the effects of the new regulatory procedure with scrutiny during its first full year of operation. It states that the Commission undertook a screening exercise at the beginning of 2007, which identified 225 acts needing to be aligned to the new PRAC procedure. The realignment was achieved through four bulk so-called 'omnibus proposals', the last of which was adopted in February 2008.

12.5 The report adds that the Commission undertook discussions with the European Parliament to improve scrutiny and streamlining of procedures, and that the Commission has committed to an improved comitology register to provide more transparent access to documents.

12.6 The also report summarises two relevant 2007 judgements from the European Court of Justice. In the first the court ruled that the Customs Code imposes no obligation on the Commission to use any particular procedure to take individual decisions. The second decided that the Commission had approved a project (on border security) which fell outside of the framework of the committee (development cooperation) in which it had been approved, and that the Commission had exceeded the implementing powers delegated to it.

12.7 Finally, the report lists the number of comitology committees as of 31 December 2007, and the number of opinions and implementing measures by committee. Numbers were slightly down on the previous years, though the large number of measures adopted in sectors such as Agriculture, Aid, and Health and Consumer Protection continued to reflect the intensity of work delegated to these committees.

The Government's view

12.8 In her Explanatory Memorandum of 22 February 2006 the Minister for Europe (Caroline Flint) briefly comments as below:

"The Government welcomes the efficiency with which the Commission has acted to bring legislative acts into line with the Regulatory Procedure with Scrutiny, and in doing so avoiding any adverse implications to the legality of the acts in question. The Government also welcomes the commissions [sic] dialogue with the European Parliament and efforts to make, what can be a complicated and opaque process, more transparent.

"However, we are slightly concerned at the quality of the report. For example, section 1.1.2. identifies an agreement as 'expected to be entered into force in June 2008'. HMG would expect a report published in December 2008 to be able to be definitive here.

"And in section 2.2, no explanation is given for the fall in implementing measures in Agriculture and Research, even though this trend is identified. We will ask the Commission to improve on this for the 2008 report."

Conclusion

12.9 We thank the Minister for her brief summary of the contents of the latest annual Commission comitology report. We share the Minister's concerns about some aspects regarding the quality of the report. We ask the Minister to cast a similarly watchful eye over future Commission reports in this and other areas. On this basis we are content to clear this otherwise uncontentious document from scrutiny.