Just because you think something is “politically sensitive” does not mean it is so.
If an initiative is politically sensitive, it deserves some extra scrutiny during adoption in the Commission, and most likely from the Council and the EP. Just because an issue is your life’s work, commercially vital to you, or the subject of your PhD, and you regard it as the ‘really important’, and should deserve the special status of ‘politically sensitive’ does not mean that the Commission, Member States or MEPs will agree with you.
The Commission has some well-laid-out criteria to identify a file as ‘politically sensitive’. They include:
- Be controversial in the comitology Committee, with a/ group of Member States, or the EP. I’m not sure if Hungry or the ID being angry with the proposal counts.
- Likely to attract significant public interest. The Daily Mail no longer counts.
- It has major financial implications. And, the strain on the current EU budget and future MFF means that the size of that number will likely come down.
The ‘politically sensitive’ can be stamped on both ordinary, delegated acts, implementing acts, and RPS measures. Commission officials are meant to, in good faith, add the designation in the Decide planning system from the start.
There is little incentive to stamp it as such. It carries with it a lot of extra work and more regular and detailed scrutiny. The incentives to do so are not there.
See ToolBox, page 38.
If you think the initiative you are working on is objectively ‘politically sensitive’ you should flag this to the Commission Services.
Before taking your pet subject up too high, explain the issue to a detached colleague or friend in the Commission/attache/EP. If they laugh out loud, or politely smile and roll their eyes, it is likely that the matter is not ‘politically sensitive’.
This is a usefully snap shot of what the Commission consider as important/politically sensitve, and what is not.
See ToolBox, page 38.
Most files are not politically sensitive. Most of the proposals the Commission adopt don’t even get read by the Commissioners. They are adopted as an A Point.