PURPOSE: to align a number of legal acts to the Treaty
on the Functioning of the European Union (Article 290 and 291,
powers delegated to the Commission).
LEGISLATIVE ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament
and of the Council.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European
Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative
procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.
BACKGROUND: the Treaty of Lisbon introduced a
distinction between the following:
- powers delegated to the Commission to adopt
non-legislative acts of general application to supplement or amend
certain non-essential elements of a legislative act (delegated
acts), as referred to in Article 290 of the Treaty on the
Functioning pf the EU; and
- powers conferred upon the Commission to adopt acts to
ensure uniform conditions for implementing legally binding Union
acts (implementing acts) as referred to in Article 291 of
the Treaty.
The measures which may be covered by delegations of
powers correspond in principle to those covered by the
regulatory procedure with scrutiny established by Article 5a of
Council Decision 1999/468/EC. This procedure still appears in
the basic acts covered by this proposal and continues to apply in
those acts until they are formally amended and adapted to the
Lisbon Treaty.
The Commission made three horizontal alignment
legislative proposals in 2013 (Omnibus
I, Omnibus
II and Omnibus
III). The European Parliament adopted its legislative
resolutions on 25 February 2014, broadly agreeing with the
proposals by the Commission. The Council, however, did not
support the Commission proposals, due to the absence of
stronger guarantees that Member State experts would be
systematically consulted in the preparation of delegated
acts.
The European Parliament, the Council and the
Commission subsequently agreed on a new framework for delegated
acts in the Interinstitutional
Agreement on Better Law-Making of 13 April 2016 (IAA) and
acknowledged the need to align all existing legislation to the
legal framework introduced by the Lisbon Treaty. In particular,
they agreed on the need to give high priority to the prompt
alignment of all basic acts that still refer to the regulatory
procedure with scrutiny.
CONTENT: this proposal concerns 170 basic acts.
The Commission proposes to amend each of these basic acts set out
in the proposal in order to adapt the acts in question to the
Lisbon Treaty. The scope of the proposal broadly covers
the legal acts covered in the three Omnibus legislative alignment
proposals adopted by the Commission in 2013. Acts on which
individual legislative proposals have been made in the meantime are
not included in the present proposal.
The alignment clauses reflect the following points in
the IAA:
- they now provide for a clear commitment to a
systematic consultation of experts from the Member States in
the preparation of delegated acts. This fulfils a key condition for
a successful second attempt to align the old regulatory procedure
with scrutiny provisions to the Lisbon Treaty. This commitment is
now explicitly included in the new standard clauses that are
to be used in the drafting of empowerments for the
Commission;
- they recognise the important role of early
cooperation and exchange of views with the European Parliament
in relation to delegated acts. The European Parliament must
receive all documents at the same time as Member State
experts, including the draft delegated acts. The alignment clauses
provide for systematic access of European Parliament experts to the
meetings of Commission expert groups preparing delegated
acts.
Accordingly, to each basic act a number of amendments
are made, and references to the regulatory procedure with scrutiny
are deleted.
This proposal does not concern eight pieces of
legislation in the area of pesticides and food, since the
Commission is reflecting on whether there is a more appropriate way
to structure these acts.
Delegate or implementing acts: as regards the choice between delegated and
implementing acts, the 2013 alignment proposals started from the
assumption that the measures covered by the regulatory procedure
with scrutiny in principle correspond to those which can be covered
by delegations of power as referred to in Article 290 TFEU. Only in
a few cases in Omnibus III was the alignment to Article 291 instead
of Article 290 proposed.
The general assumption underlying the new proposal is
that the assessment made in the 2013 Omnibus proposals remains
valid. Neither the negotiations on the 2013 Omnibus, nor the
case-law on the topic, nor the outcome of the Interinstitutional
Agreement on Better Law-Making resulted in new criteria that would
have called for a global reassessment.
Lastly, it should be noted that the IAA envisages that
the Commission may be invited to meetings in the European
Parliament (or the Council) in order to have further exchange of
views in the preparation of delegated acts.
This proposal is linked to the
proposal on adapting a number of legal acts in the area of
justice to Article 290 TFEU.