The Law, Politics and Practice of Delegated Rulemaking in the European Union

Please note: this is an online event. In case you want to participate on-site, please send an email with a request to d.shanidze@uva.nl after which you will receive a confirmation. 

The delegation of rulemaking powers represents a fundamental mechanism for the organization and functioning of the European Union ‘EU’ as it is today. The current legal regime and the inter-institutional dynamics of this phenomenon still trigger legal, political, and practical questions. The workshop will address this issue along three lines, from a two-fold conceptual and empirical perspective. The first line seeks to discuss delegated and implementing acts at a more conceptual and normative level and within the broader legal-constitutional context. The second line focuses on the material scope of norm creation. Different institutional actors are involved in the making of delegated and implementing acts. Their role differs, with each having different preferences for either form of delegation. The third line centres on the different accountability and safeguard mechanisms and the limits in delegated rulemaking as informed by scientists and technocrats.

About the organisers

Zamira Xhaferri is a Lecturer in European Law at the University of Amsterdam and a researcher at the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES). Her research interests entail EU institutional law, EU administrative law, comitology, Enlargement and external relations of the EU. She has been recently awarded by the European Commission a Jean Monnet grant for teaching and research on EU enlargement and Europeanisation in collaboration with the University of Graz. Her monograph Law and Practices of Delegated Rulemaking by the European Commission based on her PhD thesis defended in October 2020 at Maastricht University will be published by Nijhoff, Brill series in EU law in December 2022.

Florin Coman-Kund is Assistant Professor of European Union and Public International Law at Erasmus School of Law (Erasmus University Rotterdam). His research focuses on legal aspects of Union’s external administrative action and actors across various policy areas, as well as on urgent issues concerning the functions and limits of law in multilevel governance, legitimacy and accountability of EU executive action, expert-based regulatory processes and the rule of law. He obtained his PhD degree at Maastricht University, with a doctoral dissertation on “European Union Agencies as Global Actors. A Legal Study of the European Aviation Safety Agency, Frontex and Europol” (a monograph based on his PhD dissertation has been published by Routledge in 2018).

About the speakers

Herwig C. H. Hofmann is a Professor of European and Transnational Public Law at the University of Luxembourg and a member of numerous international and national scientific organisations. Professor Hofmann has conducted numerous projects and is the author and co-author of books in the field of EU public such as Administrative Law and Politics of the European Union (1st ed. Oxford 2011, 2nd revised ed. Oxford 2021) and Principles of EU Public Law and Administration (Oxford, 2022, forthcoming). He is one of the coordinators of the Research Network on European Administrative Law (ReNEUAL) and one of the co-authors and co-editors of the ‘ReNEUAL Model Rules on EU Administrative Procedure’.

Alexander Türk is a Professor of Law, Assistant Director, Centre of European Law and Director of the Postgraduate Diploma/MA in EU Law (by Distance Learning) at King’s College London. Additionally, Professor Türk is a Visiting Professor of Georgetown University, Washington, Pepperdine University, California, and Iowa University. His principal research interests are in the field of European Union Law, and in particular its constitutional and administrative law. He is also interested in comparative constitutional law, as well as transnational, comparative, and US administrative law.

Ellen Vos is Professor of EU law at Maastricht University. She is co-director of the Maastricht Center for European Law. She is a visiting professor at the College of Europe, Bruges. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Risk Regulation and of the Advisory Board of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law. Professor Vos has published widely on comitology, EU agencies, EU risk regulation, precautionary principle, health and food safety and pharmaceuticals.

Leigh Hancher is Professor of European Law at the University of Tilburg. She is a part-time Professor at the Florence School of Regulation within the European University Institute and the Director of the FSR Energy Union Law Area. Her research interests include energy market regulation, EU state aids and energy market governance. Her expertise, as well as her academic research, is focused on the changing role of the government in stimulating the liberalisation of traditionally heavily regulated sectors.

Torbjørg Jevnaker is a Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. Her research is focused on EU energy and climate policy from the perspective of public policy and administration. She is currently researching EU electricity market regulation, specifically rulemaking within the implementation stage of policymaking and the role of the EU energy agency ACER. Jevnaker is the principal investigator of the INC project, funded by the Norwegian Research Council (fni.no/INC).

Jonathan Zeitlin is Distinguished Faculty Professor of Public Policy and Governance Emeritus in the Political Science Department at the University of Amsterdam, and Founding Academic Director Emeritus of the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES). His research centres on new forms of experimentalist governance within and beyond the European Union, with particular emphasis on market regulation, environmental protection, and social welfare. He has (co)authored or (co)edited 17 books and more than 100 book chapters and articles in a wide range of journals, including Regulation & Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, West European Politics, European Union Politics, JCMS, and Politics & Society.

Thomas Christiansen is Professor of Political Science and European Integration at Luiss University, Rome. He is the Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration and co-editor (with Sophie Vanhoonacker) of the ‘European Administration Governance’ book series at Palgrave Macmillan. He has published widely on different aspects of European Union politics.

Giulia Gallinella is a Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Assistant at the Department of Political Science of Luiss University, Rome. Her research involves the role of delegated powers in emergency politics in the EU. She has also been the Editorial Manager of the Journal of European Integration since 2019.

Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín is an Associate Professor in Politics and Public Administration and Jean Monnet Chair in European Policies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is the scientific coordinator of the EUGOV: EU Government and Governance consolidated research group. Her main research areas are European institutional dynamics and public policies, with specific reference to comitology procedures, the EU presidential system.

Mendeltje van Keulen is a professor of practice of the applied research group ‘Changing role of Europe’ at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She studies EU policy making and teaches (future) professionals about the functioning of the European Union, its member states and stakeholders. She is a seconded research fellow at the directorate for international research and evaluation of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and fellow at the Montesquieu Institute for parliamentary studies.

Liesbeth A. Campo studied EU law and Dutch law at Maastricht University. She has taught law courses at Maastricht University and the University of Hasselt. Since 2013 she has been working as a legal adviser for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and she is currently posted as a legal adviser at the Permanent Representation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the European Union. Her main area of expertise is EU institutional law, in particular comitology and EU external relations law.

Jeanette Ciantar is a legal counsellor with over ten years of experience working in the EU institutions focussing on interinstitutional matters. She joined the Institutional team of the Legal Service of the Council of the European Union in September 2018 where her main focus was the negotiations with the United Kingdom of its withdrawal from the European Union under Article 50 TEU as well as the negotiations for the future relations with the UK which culminated in the conclusion of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2021.

Peter Barany is a Policy Officer at the European Commission since 2005. He worked at various departments dealing with inter-institutional relations with the European Parliament and its institutional affairs (delegated and implementing acts). He is also responsible for planning and Commissioning work programmes. Mr Barany holds postgraduate degrees in International Relations and European Studies.

Rita Sousa Uva is a Portuguese lawyer working as Senior Legal Adviser for the Legal & Procurement Department a EASA. After graduating in Law from Lisbon University, Portugal, she completed her postgraduate studies in Air Law (Lisbon), International Law (Lisbon) and in Media Law (Coimbra). She holds an LLM (Adv.) in Air & Space Law from Leiden University, the Netherlands and is currently pursuing a PhD in Air Law at the University of Cologne. She is a regular lecturer of and published author on air law legal issues.

Dr. Miriam Schoeps-McLaughlin is a German lawyer who holds a PhD in philosophy of law. In her current post, Miriam reports on delegated and implementing acts to the Conference of Committee Chairs and on such screening activities to the Secretary-General of the European Parliament. Moreover, she gives internal and external trainings on delegated and implementing acts, trilogue negotiations and Parliament’s Rules of Procedure.

Andrea Lanaia is a Postdoc Researcher and Associate Lecturer in EU Institutions and Public Policies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and a member of the research group EUGOV: EU Government and Governance. His research focuses on domestic implementation of EU energy and climate policies, and on the governance of Recovery and Resilience Fund.