Legislative Scrutiny? The Political Economy and Practice of Legislative Vetoes in the European Union

Abstract

This article examines the European Parliament's and Council of Ministers' use of legislative vetoes to override the European Commission's rule-making. Well-established principles of political economy suggest that the Parliament and Council will exercise their veto powers infrequently. Using an original data set of legislative vetoes of Commission acts by both European legislators from June 2006 to April 2014, we show that levels of formal exercise of the legislative veto to overrule the Commission's regulatory policies are indeed very low. Particularly interesting is the fact that the level of exercise of legislative veto provisions has not increased significantly since the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, suggesting that the ways in which the Treaty formally augmented the powers of legislative scrutiny have not resulted in appreciably greater formal exercise of these powers. Moreover, no significant differences appear between the two European Union legislative bodies.

Legislative Control over Executive Law‐making: Delegation of Quasi‐legislative Powers to the European Commission

“…Furthermore, to veto delegated acts the Council needs to be supported by a relatively large majority (a qualified majority consisting of at least 55 per cent of member states representing a minimum of 65 per cent of the EU's population). The high voting thresholds lead some scholars to contend that member states lose influence under the delegated acts system (Kaeding and Stack, ). In line with these arguments, Siderius and Brandsma () expected and found that the Commission is more prone to accommodate member states' preferences when drafting implementing acts than in the preparation of delegated acts.…”

The Effect of Removing Voting Rules: Consultation Practices in the Commission's Delegated Act Expert Groups and Comitology Committees

“…As shown above, the Member States feared that by making a distinction between delegated acts and implementing acts and through the removal of Member States' voting rights for delegated acts, the Member States would lose influence. Also, the voting rules in the Council for blocking a delegated act are such that the Member States lose influence under the delegated act system (Kaeding and Stack, ). Our findings add further evidence to this by demonstrating how Member State experts and the Commission interact with each other under the new system.…”

“…This new distinction also affected the consultation and control regime for Member State experts. Whereas implementing acts come with a slightly amended form of the age‐old comitology system, in which Member State experts still deliberate and vote on draft Commission executive acts, the delegated acts system moves control into the hands of the EP and the Council, which both face higher thresholds for vetoing a delegated act than Member State experts do in comitology when vetoing an implementing act (Kaeding and Stack, ). The treaty does not mention any form of Member State expert consultation for delegated acts, which leaves the system of expert consultation based on political, non‐binding commitments by the Commission (Brandsma, ; Christiansen and Dobbels, ).…”

The Principal–Agent Model, Accountability and Democratic Legitimacy

“…The process of digesting information on those is delegated to the EP's administrators, who still need to rely on the attention of the MEPs. Only when the EP has significant control powers is it relatively more likely to spend more resources on holding the executive to account, and it can even be quite successful in that regard (Brandsma 2016), but still the number of actual sanctions imposed is very low (Kaeding and Stack 2015). This problem is not limited to legislators but can be extended to the context of national administrations involved in Council decision-making (Adriaensen 2016).…”