Backstage Europe : Comitology, Accountability and Democracy in the European Union

Abstract

Comitology committees deal with the implementation of European policies. In total, about two-thirds of all implementation measures first passes through comitology. This makes comitology responsible for about half of all European directives, regulations and decisions. Several hundreds of these committees exist, and their competences range from juridical aspects of cableways to preventing animal diseases. They are composed of civil servants from all member states who are specialized in the topics under discussion. Expertise, thus, plays a prominent role. Who, if anyone, monitors and assesses their performance? To what extent are the current accountability regimes and practices in this area of EU governance appropriate? Past research related to this question exclusively focused at the formal arrangements between comitology and the European Parliament or the Court of Justice. It shows that accountability is on the increase, but still quite poorly developed. This thesis argues that accountability at the European level alone does not suffice for multi-level governance instruments like comitology. Rather, accountability needs to be assured at both the European and the national levels. But evidence from the national level is not available for comitology. This thesis therefore uses new data collected at the national level. The evidence has been collected by means of a survey to all Dutch and Danish committee participants and their immediate superiors, as well as by interviews with twenty-eight of them, supplemented by five observations of committee meetings in Brussels. The analysis shows that the superiors of the committee participants are quite much guided by what comes to their desks. The amount of transmitted information depends on the degree of expertise of both the policy expert and his superior, and also on the degree of autonomy that the superior leaves to the committee participant. The superiors furthermore read selectively as they have to cope with a high workload themselves. This also translates itself in the frequency of discussions: if no written feedback is given about a committee meeting, the odds that past behaviour is being discussed go down. Ill-informed superiors are thus left asleep. But sometimes, superiors do see it is time for action and it appears that mostly they are able to sanction or reward the behaviour of their subordinates. That, however, is only the final step of a process of accountability; in terms of information transfer and frequency of debates cases differ a lot more. Accountability at the national level, thus, appears supply-driven instead of demand-driven: the initiative for sending information lies with the committee participant. This is situation is problematic, especially for comitology. Because of its multi-level character, no single entity can justifiably be held responsible for its outcomes. The Commission depends on the member states and vice versa, and within the member states the national parliaments are supposed to scrutinize their respective governments.