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- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere Europarecht und Völkerrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Weiß) (24) (remove)
Democratization of good global governance: The EU's role in the Parliamentarization of trade policy
(2022)
The quest for good governance in trade relations occurs against the backdrop of an increa-sing politicization of trade policy. In the new reality of global value chains and servitisation, regulating trade goes far beyond technical issues of reducing entrance barriers, border measures and tariffs, but becomes a comprehensive endeavour of scrutinizing and policing behind-the-border political issues. Therefore, a call for raising the legitimacy of trade policy formulation and implementation rises. Hence, parliamentarisation of trade policy is ever more necessary. The EU's constitutional development and its practice in trade policy is a good example for more parliamentary involvement, which strengthens trade policy's legi-timacy, transparency, and public awareness. Thus, the EU indeed is, despite all weaknesses,
a pacemaker and hence good global actor to the benefit of democratisation of global trade governance, being an essential factor of good governance.
Wolfgang Weiss’ contribution on “Constitutional Challenges to EU Administrative Soft Law During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Some Proposed Remedies” Studies how during the Covid-19 pandemic, as EU member states struggled to deal with the pandemic, EU officials increasingly resorted to so-called “soft law” to provide guidance to member states. He concludes that, while there are benefits to using EU soft law for crisis management and domestic implementation of EU, he raises concerns regarding their challenges for democratic legitimacy and the rule of law. He contends that these challenges should be addressed by a legislative enactment that sets forth a general framework for the adoption of EU soft law, core elements of which should be stipulations of subsidiarity vis-a-vis executive rulemaking and minimum procedural, transparency and justification requirements for the adoption of Commission soft law. Their domestic effects and reviewability should be clarified as well.
The introduction will describe the constant evolving global political context correlated to the events occurring, specifically, in the trade environment and the unprecedented challenges they pose for the EU Trade Policy. These identified and introduced challenges will be addressed in detail in the following book chapters. It will also introduce the reader to the individual contributions of the book and briefly present and anticipate the results attained.
Introduction
(2018)
EU administrative law scholarship and practice remain confused about the reach and interrelation of arts 290 and 291 TFEU, which created the categories of delegated and implementing Commission acts. The introduction of these two different instruments of executive rule-making by the Lisbon Treaty has prompted attempts in delineating them, based on constitutional theories of separation of powers or functional differentiation. These attempts have failed to a large extent, all the more since the CJEU’s relevant case law has not been helpful in constructing a proper distinction. Today, recourse to arts 290 and 291 TFEU by the legislator takes place in the tension created between the fact that the Treaties, informed by an abstract constitutional distinction between legislation and execution, appear to have created categorically different acts, and the fact that delegated and implementing rule-making procedures in practice have become increasingly similar to each other. In simplified terms, the problem is that delegated and implementing acts appear – in terms of their foundation in primary law – as fundamentally different acts that are, however, adopted in practice through similar procedures, at the same time as their content and legal effects are indistinguishable in many or even in most cases. Yet, if we accept that the creation of two forms of Commission acts was prompted by some form of legal necessity or legitimate political will, then understanding the difference between delegating and implementing acts remains paramount.
Arts. 290 and 291 TFEU are notoriously hard to differentiate. However, there is some evidence that a separation on the basis of substantive regulation through delegated acts and procedural specifications by implementing acts is forthcoming. The substantive – procedural differentiation is not very clear cut, but it affords the institutions flexibility in answering new challenges while at the same time exerting some guiding force. This Conclusion describes the separation of delegated and implementing acts along the substantive – procedural differentiation but also points to problems ahead. Thus, constitutional ambiguity, an inappropriate reliance on pre-Lisbon doctrine and the lack of a common vision continue to plague the law on EU administrative rule-making. To find a way to fulfil the promise of simplification that is part of the Lisbon reform, the EU institutions will all need to take the procedural safeguards around delegated and implementing acts more seriously.