Hello, welcome back and nice to see you. Today we're going to explore the European policy process. Who makes European policy? Often the European Union is seen as a supranational organization with its own decision making bodies, the Commission and the European Parliament. But is this indeed the case? To explain this process, we use a simple illustration with two different levels of governance, domestic and European. The blue part represents the European level. The green part represents the domestic level within the member states. In fact, this should be 28 different boxes or perhaps 27 in the near future, when the UK leaves the EU. This figure only represents one member state. We also distinguish three columns, preparation, law making and implementation. These three stages are broadly defined. For instance implementation includes the making of delegating and implementing acts. These acts further specify the legislative measures adopted by the European lawmakers. The next slide provides more information about actors. The bended area in the figure, move from an initiative for a new policy into the preparation at the European level, law making and finally in the form of regulations or directives, back towards the member states. Let's zoom into the initiation of a policy. This stems from the political representatives from the member states. Various interest groups or business may be facing a problem which they would like to resolve. To do this, they involve national policymakers to signal to Brussels. When successful, an issue is added to the political agenda of the EU. The next step is the preparation of a policy. Here the European Commission is in the lead. It may start with the publication of a consultative paper, the so called green and white papers. A green paper aims to discuss the topic, while the white paper already formulates the way in which a policy could be developed. To support the preparation of a new proposal, the Commission may set expert committees. Once the Commission wants to move an idea about a new policy, consultations will be initiated as part of an obligatory impact assessment. Once approved the Commission will submit the proposal to the lawmakers. At this point, the legislative procedure, under which a proposal can be adopted is relevant. This can be the ordinary legislative procedure, or a procedure in which the Council of Ministers acts on its own. The ordinary legislative procedure or co-decision procedure as it was called in the past, requires that both the Council and the European Parliament decides. Member states are represented in the council, which formally decides by qualified majority and sometimes unanimity. As this research shows, in making decisions the council often aims for consensus. The council has several configurations in which line ministers come together. Furthermore, it makes use of various high level groups and working parties in preparing it's position. Parliament has directly elected members from the member states, and in the ordinary legislative procedure, it decides by majority rule. Both in Parliament and Council decision making starts in committees. In parliament mostly several standing committees discuss the proposal first, before it can be moved to the plenary. In the council negotiations start in the working party, which reports to a higher level group. A well known high level group is Coreper, the committee of permanent representatives. It oversees and coordinates the work of a large number of committees and working parties. Proposals often shuttle between Coreper and these groups before they can be tabled for a meeting of ministers. During the legislative process, a conciliation committee can be formed, when the Parliament and the Council do not agree on a proposal. This committee may come together at the end of the ordinary legislative procedure. Another committee that is relevant is the Trilogue, which is an informal meeting between the Commission, the Council and Parliament, at the beginning of the process. An agreement at this stage, which is called an early agreement, saves the lawmakers a lot of time. The European Council is the meeting of heads of states in government. It comes together at least twice per half year, which is the period of one presidency of the Council of Ministers. This meeting doesn't adopt laws because that is the role of the Council of Ministers. The decisions of the European Council are more of a strategic nature and may effect law making in the Union. National parliaments are not so well represented in the European policy process. The Lisbon Treaty introduced the early warning mechanism, or yellow card procedure. In this procedure, chambers of national parliaments may submit an opinion to the Commission. If more than 30% of parliaments do so, the Commission needs to reconsider its proposal. Of course, national parliaments may also scrutinize the national government during the whole legislative process. Once the proposal is adopted, it moves back to the member states for implementation. Sometimes a law requires additional regulation. In that case, the Commission is allowed to detail some elements as part of a delegated act. Another possibility the Commission has, is to coordinate smooth implementation for which it may adopt a implementing act. In both instances, the Commission is overseen by the member states and Parliament although in different ways. Back in the member states, policy needs to be implemented. This requires in case of directives, that the content is translated into the national legal order. This is called transposition. Regulations are already binding, and do not need to be fully transposed. But still, in order to support the implementation, member states may want to make some adaptations in the national legal order. Finally, the measures are now ready for implementation, the actual bringing about of the effects proposed by the policy goals. Well, is this process only between supranational bodies? Not quite. We've seen that member states are present at almost every step. Does this make the process intergovernmental? Not quite either, since Parliament and the Commission also fulfill a prominent role. So the European policy process has features of both. It is supranational and intergovernmental at the same time.
