EFTA has opened up the secret world of EU law making by delegated legislation.
You can visit the site here or http://www.efta.int/eea-lex
They have put on line draft and adopted implementing and delegated acts that impact EFTA members.
This is a big step to open law making. Whilst Member States and the European Parliament – and the players who are leaked the proposals in advance – have access to Commission proposals, the public do not.
93% of EU laws made this way
Around 93% of EU laws are adopted by what was called comitology, laws adopted by committees. Delegated legislation is important. It is about the adopting of technical rules to make EU laws work. All countries have it. Politicians are not going to decide on the latest air quality modelling system to use for monitoring and how to transfer air quality data and information between countries. But, they ask the Commission to work with experts and Member States to come up with rules to allow that to happen. Those delegated laws are necessary.
Real laws deciding important things
Sometimes they touch on sensitive and political issues. In the last 2 years important issues have been decided that even the mainstream high end press started writing about.
Recently when the Commission tabled a piece of delegated legislation that weakened existing laws on diesel emissions from cars. A Committee of Member State officials and finally the EP agreed to it.
The importation of Canadian oil sands into Europe was given the nod after the Commission adopted a piece of delegated legislation that allowed it. Many MEPs and NGOs were surprised because they thought the issue has been settled a few years earlier in a Directive (and spent a small fortune thinking they had achieved) but they may have overlooked what the original directive had allowed for, and the Commission re-opened the matter, and tabled a proposal to allow the importation of Canadian oil sands into the EU.
EFTA Opens the System up to the European Public
Before this EFTA site went on line, proposed implementing acts were available via a Commission site that whilst public, would test a good hackers skills to find out where any of the Commission’s proposals were.
Proposed delegated acts were kept hidden from the public and officially only available to MEPs and Member State officials.
Thank you EFTA for striking an important blow for open law making.
Maybe the Commission will follow EFTA’s lead and get their game into the 21st century.
Note
I’ll follow this up with a blog on how difficult it is stop a proposal from the Commission (whether it is a delegated or implementing act) and how opening the process up public scrutiny will help MEPs and Member States to effectively scrutinise the Commission. The Commission are just up-dating the rules under the Better Regulation package they recently agreed with the European Parliament and Council.