I’ve been crunching some numbers with Vote Watch Europe’s new comitology section.
From 1 January 2018 to 12 June 2021, the EU has adopted a lot of secondary legislation:
- 495 delegated acts (Source Register of delegated and implementing acts)
- 2861 Comitology votes (implementing acts and RPS measures) (source VoteWatch)
Chance to Block
The chance that any proposal the Commission puts forward gets blocked is low.
Out of the votes in Committee on comitology none got a qualified majority vote against them. 20 received no opinion. I guess they were all adopted.
For delegated acts, over the same period, 7 delegated act challenges were adopted. Another 6 were tabled but did not meet the necessary majorities. The Council brought 4 of the successful challenges and the EP 3.
Strong Backing for the Commission
Looking at the votes in three of the Committees that I know best, the Commission received strong backing. Even though there were votes against by a Member State(s) and abstentions, I could not see any where the Commission were not comfortable securing qualified majority vote for their position.
This trend is likely to continue. The 3 areas I looked at, had the UK leading the vote against the Commission’s proposal by some way.
The odds of blocking the Commission in secondary legislation are low. Anyone who suggests otherwise is taking you for an expensive ride.
It means that your real chance to success is to influence the Commission’s proposal. That is either at the technical and scientific stage, or when the proposal is being drafted and adopted in the Commission.