Introduction

The European Union has no general law-making power. Instead, its legislative powers are to be found in specific Treaty provisions which authorise it to make laws in certain fields. This system enabled the designers of the Treaty to strike a delicate balance between the EU institutions and the Member States, with the types of instrument and legal procedure varying according to the field in question. As the Treaty has expanded, both in terms of its competencies and its institutions, so the number of legal bases has become ever more voluminous and the institutional settlement ever more complex. All this raises a question about the coherence of Community law-making, namely whether the principles for determining which procedure is used and which type of law is adopted strike an appropriate balance between the different fields of Community activity, respect the prerogatives of the different institutions and sufficiently imbue the system with a sense of rationality and clarity.

The second question addressed in this chapter is that of the law-making procedures themselves. There are three main law-making procedures, but they cover only a small fraction of the laws adopted by the Community. The majority of Community laws are adopted under procedures whereby initial legislation delegates the Commission law-making powers, which it exercises in liaison with committees of national representatives in a system known as comitology. Laws adopted under comitology are often as significant as those adopted under the primary legislative procedures.