Paper Titles & Abstracts

In democratic nation states legislative powers are usually endowed with the national (and regional) parliament(s) following the classic separation of powers doctrine. A different principle applies in EU law: the principle of institutional balance. The Commission, the EP and the Council all have legislative powers in the institutional architecture of the EU. The principle of institutional balance does not imply that each of these institutions holds equal powers. Instead, there is a separation of functions. The Treaties grant to an institution a particular power because it is considered best placed to use that power to achieve the overall goals of the Union.The research question in the paper is twofold. First, in which way are legislative powers divided between the Commission, the EP and the Council? Second, what are the underlying reasons for this division of powers? The paper discusses briefly the genesis of institutional balance in EU law but it mainly focuses on recent developments. The changes made by the Treaty of Lisbon to the adoption of secondary EU legal acts served both pragmatic and normative goals. The normative aim was to add democratic accountability to EU law-making. The pragmatic goal was to enhance the performance of the EU institutional system by generalising QMV in the Council and by making the ordinary legislative procedure (previously co-decision) the default legislative procedure. Whilst institutional balance is an established principle of EU law, its application remains contested. The paper proceeds to examine how the institutions actually exercise their powers. The expected conclusion is that institutional practice adds to Treaty-based decision rules and even modifies these rules. An example are the EP-Commission framework agreements and, in particular, their latest framework agreement of year 2010. The paper concludes that the gap between formal decision rules and fluid practices is real and continues to expand.