EPTIn the shadows behind the commission works a staff of more than 30.000 people. They work in what is called directorates-generals (DGs) and services. The DGs are departments with a policy area as their main task and at the moment there are 33 in total (some commissioners have more than 1 DG).
The first thing happening in legislation is the commissioners suggesting a legislation to the DG. The original suggestions can have come from other stakeholders (including “citizen initiatives” requiring more than 1 million signatures from at least seven countries as of 2012. To be accepted as one of the seven coutries you need at least the countrys number of parliamentarians times 750 signatures with name, nationality and address for confirmation in the nation. Like a 7 man committee of ordinary citizen will ever be able to pull that off without significant help from lobbyists and/or larger european organisations...), countries or EU institutions, but the actual initiation of the legislation is at the hands of the European Commission. When an initiative is started from the College of Commissioners, it gets send to a directorate where the real work begins. The work doesn't seem to be standardized, but many best practices and intersecting legal requirements, depending on the type of proposal, applies. The normal procedure for larger legislative proposals are, however, standard:
-The first step is planing and timetabling of the proposal and you can see the plan here. (http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/planned_ia/roadmaps_2013_en.htm).
- Then an initial Impact Assesment (IA) is written and a round of consultations with stakeholders, experts and interested parties begin with a public questionaire as the primary citizen-related initiative (http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/consultations/index_en.htm).
- The report is finalized and the Impact Assessment Board (IAB) will give recommandations of larger revision needing resubmission or smaller improvements to be made in later stages. It seems the IAB is pretty harsh at the directorates given that 47 % of the proposals needs resubmission. The IAB itself, gives rushed IAs in the directorates and insufficient incorporation of comments from the consultations and specifically the public questionaire as reasons for the high number. Be aware that the final IAs live up to the standards from IAB, so the final result should be good.
- The IA report, the IAB recommandation and the proposal are getting presented to and improved by other directorates and services.
- Before entering the legislative process, the IA report, an executive summary, IAB opinion(s) and the proposal is delivered to the College of Commissioners.
The proposal will become an item on the list of the next weekly meeting among the commissioners. At that meeting the commissioner with responsibility for the specific DG will explain the reasoning for bringing forth the proposal. The commissioners will discuss the item and if opinions divert, the president will conduct a vote. If the vote is for the proposal, all members of the commission will have to take that position afterwards!
Sources:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/aboutparliament/en/001eb38200/European-citizens'-initiative.html
http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/ia_key/ia_key_en.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/about/ds_en.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/key_docs/docs/iab_report_2012_en_final.pdf
