The Commission is entrusted by Article 211 of the Treaty of Rome three main roles:

• a guardian of the treaties (seizure of the judiciary),
• a role for Proposal (Legislature),
• and an enforcement role (Executive).

In addition, the Committee has several other powers , among which the negotiation of trade agreements and association agreements with third countries, the establishment of the preliminary draft budget and management of EU funds.

In fact the Committee accumulated the bulk of legislative, executive and monitoring the application of its guidelines

Executive Board

The executive powers of the Commission did not properly belong: they are conferred by the Union Council. This delegation is the rule since the Single Act (amendment to Article 145 TEC current Article 202): The Council of the Union can exercise directly implementing powers only in "specific cases".

The Commission also has a role as negotiator of trade agreements with the world.

In all international trade negotiations, Member States are represented by the Commission. Trade agreements (opening of markets, privatization of services) must therefore engage Member States through the Commission. The Commission participates in negotiations for "General Agreement on Trade and Services". The issue of privatization of public services and putting them into competition, traditionally the domain of states, now reports to the Commission .

Over 100 countries worldwide have signed agreements with the Union including the developing countries of Africa, Caribbean, Pacific and those of the former Soviet Union who receive substantial technical assistance.

These negotiations are sometimes criticized for their lack of transparency, the trade commissioner in a manner deemed insufficient communicating with governments like the European Parliament .

This skill of execution contains important prerogatives, especially in the field of common agricultural policy , as well as that of competition policy , where he responsible for the authorization levels and penalize abuse of dominance and cartels.

Guardian of the Treaties

The Commission stated in Article 211 TEC, "enforces the provisions of

. Finally, it controls the application of derogations to treaties (known as safeguards).

Force proposal and motor integration

The Commission was originally thought of building community as the engine of integration. We wanted to give the effect of a draft European institution that guarantees the public interest and that its proposals would boost adoption of advances that have been more difficult under strictly intergovernmental institutions. The existence of the Commission is thus one of the most remarkable peculiarities of European institutions.

The Commission has a monopoly right of initiative in the first pillar of the EU (supranational pillar on integrated policies (common agricultural policy, customs union, internal market, Euro, etc..) that can weigh in the preparation of acts of Union Council and Parliament. Article 250 TEC adds to the importance of this role: it states that the Council of the Union "can not take an act constituting an amendment to the proposal only by acting unanimously. "The Union Council may well depart from the Commission proposal by unanimity, which sometimes gives the Commission a conciliatory role between Member States.

In addition, as part of the second and third pillar: Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and police cooperation and judicial (criminal), the Committee shares this right of initiative with the Member States.

Parliament and the Council of the Union may request the Commission to legislate in a field. But the commission, which has the sole right of initiative, may ignore this request . Section 192 of the Treaty of Amsterdam (Article 225 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) said that although "The European Parliament may, by a majority of its members, request the Commission to submit any proposal appropriate on issues which it considers that the development of an act of the Union for the implementation of the Constitution. If the Commission does not submit a proposal, it shall communicate the reasons the European Parliament. However, the real scope of section 192 is limited in practice as shown in the following example: The Court of Justice has handed down four judgments between December 2007 and June 2008 affirming the primacy of corporate rights over those of employees (Viking, Laval stop, stop Ruffert, see Commission against Luxembourg). In response, 22 October 2008, Parliament adopted a resolution openly contradicting the judgments of the Court, in which he ultimately asked the Commission to make a legislative proposal on transnational collective agreements. But it has not acted on that request. It was justified by asserting that she "did not see the need at this stage" .

Green and White Papers

In general, green papers published by the Commission are intended to initiate a debate by taking stock of various ideas circulating on a topic that is not the subject of specific EU policies. Interested parties are then invited to express their comments in writing. The white papers resulting sometimes (but not necessarily either) then contain a coherent and reasoned specific proposals, which will eventually lead to a concerted political leadership. This applies, for example the White Paper on completing the internal market , published in 1985 and leading to the signing of the Single European Act in February 1986.

Composition

The 27 commissioners are generally chosen from the majority party by the Governments of Member States. Appointed for five years they form a college solidarity. They are selected in principle "because of their general competence .

For some authors, this independence is further limited by their openness to the interests of private companies speaking through lobbies. This led the Commission to be influenced more by lobbying by private companies that the public interest . For others, the Commission plays a role as "honest broker" between the various interests represented by lobbyists .

For the current composition of the Commission, see Barroso Commission.

Composition of Board

Following the institutional reform of the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice , the procedure for appointing members of the College of the Commission begins with the designation by the European Council by qualified majority, a presidential candidate. The European Parliament then approves the appointment, by simple majority. Thus, Jos Manuel Duro Barroso was nominated by the Council in June 2004 , before obtaining a positive vote of Parliament on July 22.

Then, the Council adopted by qualified majority and by common accord with the President appointed a slate of candidates for commissioner positions (no more than one per Member State). Before enlargement on ¹ May 2004, the large states, including France, had two commissioners: the French government proposed, then a representative of the majority party in power, and a member of the main opposition party. Finally, the president and members of the Commission are appointed by the Council acting by qualified majority, after approval of the College by the Parliament. At this stage, the college presented by Barroso on 12 August 2004 met with resistance on several points: Barroso preferred make a reshuffle before the vote, which finally took place on November 18 (449 for, 149 against and 82 abstentions).

The Treaty of Lisbon amends the method of appointment by strengthening the role of Parliament in the process. The European Council would propose to the Parliament by qualified majority, a candidate for President of the Commission, "taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after appropriate consultations" . This candidate, voted for parliamentarians should be elected by Parliament "to the majority of its members" (ie 376 votes out of 750 members).

Chairman of the Commission may, with the approval of the college, demanding the resignation of a commissioner. Furthermore, Parliament can adopt the two-thirds majority of votes cast and a majority of its members a motion of censure of the college, for its operation. It is to avoid a vote on a censure motion that the Santer Commission resigned collectively on the night of 15 to 16 March 1999.

Chairmen

Operation

Decision Making

The decision process follows two methods in operation in the European Union :

• the Community method , which applies to the first pillar , the European Commission has the monopoly right of initiative and it is upstream of the codecision procedure ;
• in the intergovernmental method , which applies to second and third pillars , the Commission shares the right of initiative with Member States.

The Commission is assisted in its work by a Secretariat General and 40 directorates general (DGs) and specialized services. DGs consult widely different interest groups and the government to produce national proposals. Thus, proposals that emanate directly from the single reflection of the DG are the exception rather than the rule.

The Commission may, in decision-making in the EU, promote the involvement of "public interest" such as consumer associations and environmental groups, however, in addition to specific incentives, firms Private have significant resources and can provide staff of the Commission on specific elements of motivation, such as gainful employment, outside the EU bureaucracy and, thus, private interests are more likely to influence Commission that the "public interest. They even offer text "turnkey" to the Commission, who simply adopt .

From the outset, representatives of government national and regional governments, interest groups and lobbyists have been invited to serve on advisory committees: the negotiations that take place result in the publication of green and Books white (see below) suggesting avenues for actions.

Some examples of advisory committees:

• Farming,
• Fishing and aquaculture ,
• Food Chain and Animal and Plant Health,
• Science and research .

The proposed branch (DG) and other decisions are collectively endorsed by the Commission by a majority of its members.

p> The meetings of the College of Commissioners meetings are prepared by their cabinet members (meetings called "special chiefs"), followed by meetings of their chiefs of staff (meetings called "Update"). Points A are adopted without discussion by the Commissioners, the points B are those who could not be agreed upon in the limbs or head of office.

If the commissioners are normally issued to any subordination and represent the national interest, the fact remains that they naturally maintain strong links with their State of origin, they sometimes plead the cause, but not only ^{Communication and Languages}

The European Commission must apply, in principle, the language policy of the European Union.

The English is the main working language of the European Commission. By contrast the French and German have lost ground despite the fact that they are taught as foreign languages in all EU countries and have a sufficient number of translators to and from each other languages official of the European Union. - See CICS - DG Interpretation of the Commission. In practice, it is primarily English, which is used as a working language. French is used in some DGs who are traditionally under the influence of France (such as DG Agriculture). The German is still used very marginal. (Mark Abel)

They were also the only three languages (before the 1995 enlargement and with the exception of Dutch ) Official simultaneously in several EU countries. If this criterion was adopted today, the Swedish would be eligible as it is official in Sweden and Finland (and widely understood in Denmark ). Since the recent accession of Cyprus , the Greek would now be eligible under this criterion. Regarding other European countries applying for accession to the Union, the Turkish fulfill this condition if Turkey joined the EU and the Croatia if Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to join (although the latter considers the Bosnian like a different language), and Italian if Switzerland decided to do the same. All the other official languages of the European Union are not at the national level in only one Member State.

Today there is a certain linguistic discrimination on English, since some jobs from the European Commission are intended exclusively for candidates whose mother tongue is English .

However, it should be noted that international standards for metadata (those relied upon by markup languages such as common HTML and XML and their variants) are currently only available in English. These standards were primarily of U.S. origin, although their bodies will be open to international participants (particularly in Europe, but also Canadian, Chinese, Japanese and Russian) who campaigned for their translation into other languages.

The organization adopted for the management of reference data is subject to the standard ISO / IEC 11179 on metadata registries. The metadata standards determine the common framework for interoperability and European classification schemes of data ( glossaries , thesauri , taxonomies ). No implementation of these standards has been carried out by the standardization bodies of the States of the European Union. These standards are necessary for the implementation of tools for managing spatial data ( INSPIRE ).

Actions undertaken by the European Commission

Many programs funded by the European Commission exist. They operate mainly from bidding. Each is managed by a branch controlled by the Commission:

• European Programme Leonardo da Vinci
• Living Lab

In the audiovisual sector:

• Evaluation of Media Plus program

The Media Plus program comes at a European level, especially at the cinema: to facilitate the development, distribution and promotion of films in the European Union. This program was established by the European Commission in early 1990.

• Study practices and needs of the European audiovisual industry in dubbing and subtitling. This study aims to establish a precise statement concerning the use of dubbing and subtitling in Europe. It includes an overview by country of Technical Industries, a market analysis of dubbing and subtitling, an analysis of career training in dubbing and subtitling, etc..

In the area of Health and Consumer Protection:

• Setting up the network TRACES. The computer network is a network TRACES veterinary sanitary control of movements, imports and exports of animals and animal products europe.ca network is the responsibility of the Directorate General for Health and Consumer Affairs, or SANCO .

In the area of cooperation:

• EuropeAid is the Directorate-General of the European Commission responsible for the implementation of projects and foreign aid programs in the world. She works closely with the countries neighboring the EU, Russia, parts of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP), Latin America and Asia. EuropeAid intends to provide effective development assistance. The focus is on maximizing the value and impact of aid funding by ensuring a rapid and responsible support.

Sources

References

Bibliography