The effect of information on oversight: the European Parliament’s response to increasing information on comitology decision-making
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852311429756 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
78(1) 74–92
! The Author(s) 2012
The effect of information on
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852311429756
Parliament’s response to
ras.sagepub.com
increasing information on
comitology decision-making
Gijs Jan Brandsma
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Abstract
The European Parliament, like any parliament, needs information for scrutinizing
executive decision-making. But how does it process this information in practice? This
article focuses on the European Parliament’s increasing grip on ‘comitology’ decision-
making: committees composed of national civil servants, producing executive measures
that are adopted by the European Commission. Two types of changes are addressed:
organizational changes and changes in working methods of EP staff. The analysis shows
that the European Parliament has effectively built up a system of decentralized police-
patrol oversight, but not following more information rights as such but rather as a result
of its increasing political powers. The article concludes that information only affects the
behaviour of the European Parliament in combination with very specific as opposed to
quite general or diffuse political rights.
Points for practitioners
This article traces the effects of information on the functioning of the European
Parliament as an accountability forum. It concludes that information only makes a
difference when coupled with very specific as opposed to very general or diffuse
political rights.
Keywords
accountability, administrative organization and structures, control, international
administration, transparency
Corresponding author:
Gijs Jan Brandsma, Utrecht University, Utrecht School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, Utrecht 3511 ZC,
The Netherlands
Email: g.j.brandsma@uu.nl
Brandsma
75
Introduction
The European Parliament, like any other parliament, needs information in order to
be able to function. For its legislative function, expert information is vital so that
members of parliament are able to make sound decisions with respect to the effec-
tiveness of a particular policy. For its function of overseeing the executive and
holding it to account, members of parliament need information that makes them
aware of the wheelings and dealings of the executive. Although generally informa-
tion on executive decision-making is of paramount importance for parliaments, the
relevance of different types of information depends on the type of control that is
exercised. From a checks and balances perspective, for instance, information is
required that reveals whether or not the executive has exceeded its discretionary
powers that are specified in legislation. A popular control perspective, by contrast,
would point to information on the input and output of executive decision-making
processes, in order for the legislator to be able to judge what particular preferences
have in fact been translated into policies and how, and what have not been. Finally,
a learning perspective would mainly require evaluative information in order for the
legislator to learn from past events (Bovens et al., 2008).
In much of the literature on government transparency and accountability in
general, an ‘automatic link’ is assumed from transparency, or rather, the availabil-
ity of information, to accountability (Naurin, 2007). It is assumed that the mere
fact that a principal is informed of the behaviour of an agent makes the agent act
more in line with the preferences of the principal – whether because the agent
anticipates the response of the principal or because the principal in fact responds
to the information he receives (e.g. Huber, 2000; Lane, 2005; Lupia, 2006; Strøm,
2000). Information, thus, seems something of which a parliament cannot have
enough. Even though the availability of more information does not necessarily
make government more accountable in itself, information does contain the cues
to which parliaments respond. Thus, processing information is an important pre-
condition for evaluating the performance of government, and setting the wheels of
accountability in motion (Bovens, 2007; Naurin, 2007).
But in this respect only little is known about how the European Parliament
processes information. Previous work mainly addresses this issue both in abstract
terms as part of a broader concept of oversight, as well as with a focus on West-
European and American national parliaments (e.g. McCubbins and Schwartz,
1984; Saalfeld, 2000). This is surprising given that accountability is an issue of
major concern with respect to European Union policy-making (e.g. Bovens
et al., 2010; Gustavsson et al., 2009; Papadopoulos, 2010). Over recent years the
repertoire of instruments available to the European Parliament in order to hold the
Commission accountable has increased (Bovens et al., 2010). Nevertheless such
instruments can only work to their full potential when sufficient information
comes in and when this information is actually processed.
In this regard it must also be remembered that the European Parliament cannot
easily be compared to national parliaments in Europe. All Western democratic
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(1)
parliamentary systems have well-established systems of interacting with the exec-
utive that are mediated by political parties (Saalfeld, 2000), making control of the
executive to a great degree a party political matter (Peters, 2009). But the European
Union works differently from the standard model. Although the legislative powers
of the European Union are shared between the European Parliament and the
Council of Ministers, only the European Parliament has scrutiny powers. Also, it
consists of parties and transnational party groups that do not support the
Commission by means of a permanent coalition of parties. This means that
majorities need to be built for accepting amendments to proposed legislation,
but also for budget approval or for opposing executive measures adopted by the
Commission.
This contribution focuses on the processing of information by the European
Parliament. More specifically it homes in on information on comitology: an
executive decision-making mode acting under the auspices of the Commission
that deals with about 60 percent of all European executive measures, and for
which the European Parliament has fought a long institutional battle in order
to get information and control rights (Brandsma, 2010). This means that
comitology is not ‘just’ another mode of governance, but actually the main
decision-making process when it comes to adopting executive measures. How
does the European Parliament process information on comitology in the con-
text of holding the Commission to account? This is the question that is central
to this contribution.
The analysis is split into two parts. After a brief introduction on comitology and
the EP’s stance towards it, the first part of the analysis presents how the parlia-
ment’s scrutiny powers and its information rights regarding comitology have devel-
oped. The second part analyses on the basis of interviews with EP staff – to whom
the task of processing information is delegated – how the EP internally manages the
flow of information on comitology decision-making. The article concludes that,
even though in the past the EP has strongly bargained for more information so as
to facilitate it in taking political action, information hardly seems to have made a
difference in practice.
Comitology and the European Parliament
The EP has shown itself to be very interested in controlling the executive measures
that are adopted by the Commission. Obviously, executive acts are less far-reaching
than legislation, but executive acts contain all the specific provisions that will effec-
tively be applied and have an impact on the lives of citizens and the prospects of
businesses throughout the community.
Since the 1990s, several efforts have been made to increase the transparency of
the Commission towards the general public (Brandsma et al., 2008; Hix, 1998;
Lodge, 1994; Peterson, 1995). Simultaneously, the EP has fought a long battle
regarding access to Commission documents and scrutiny powers of its executive
activities as well. This battle was fought out especially visibly in the realm
Brandsma
77
of comitology (Bradley, 2008; Tu¨rk, 2003). Comitology refers to a set of about
250 committees that are chaired by the Commission and staffed by member state
civil servants, who discuss and vote on executive measures. About half of all
executive Decisions, Directives and Regulations are adopted via comitology, and
in addition it also deals with many executive measures that take a different form,
such as annual working programmes. In total, comitology produces between 2000
and 2500 executive measures per year (Brandsma, 2010). This makes comitology
the main executive governance tool within the European Union.
The practice of establishing comitology committees has existed ever since the
first years of European integration because the member states feared they would
lose control over policy implementation when delegating this to the Commission.
Given the fact that only member state civil servants are represented in the com-
mittees, the power of the EP has long been a contested issue. Throughout its his-
tory, the EP has consistently objected to comitology, mainly for two reasons. The
first is that the Parliament wishes to be on equal footing with the...
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