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Delegation of Regulatory Authority in the European Union

The Relevance of the American Model of Independent Agencies ^*

Xénophon A. Yataganas ^**

• Abstract
• Introduction
• A. Two different but convergent federal systems
  • 1. Delegation in the US
  • 2. Delegation in the EU
  • 3. The origins and growth of regulatory agencies in the US
  • 4. The origins and growth of executive agencies in the EU
• B. Regulation and institutional balance
  • The Meroni doctrine
  • 1. The nature of Community regulatory power
  • 2. The limitations of the parliamentary/majority logic
  • 3. The question of the democratic deficit
  • 4. The shortcomings of comitology
  • 5. The nature of the institutional balance
  • 6. Agencies in the Community architecture
• C. Accountability: autonomy and control
  • 1. Autonomy
    • a) The founding statutes
    • b) Relationship with the legislative and executive powers
    • c) Appointment procedures
  • 2. Control
    • a) Executive oversight
    • b) Budgetary evaluation
    • c) Procedural control
    • d) Judicial review
    • e) Network coordination
• Conclusions
• Afterword
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• References
• Legal Cases

^* A draft of this paper was presented at a hearing organized by the "European Governance" task force in Brussels, on 12 March 2001. I want to thank the participants for their useful comments and criticisms.

^** Legal Adviser in the Legal Service of the Commission of the European Union; Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Fellow at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University. The views expressed in this article are strictly personal. I am indebted to the European Commission, particularly to her Forward Studies Unit and to the WCFIA for giving me financial, material and intellectual support. Special thanks to my research assistant Leonid Peiskhin for his massive effort on bibliography and to Donald Halstead for his decisive editing work.

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© Xénophon A. Yataganas 2001