The Commission's Executive Discretion, Information and Comitology

Abstract

This article examines the determinants of the European Commission's executive discretion and the impact of comitology when policy authority is delegated by member states and the Parliament (i.e. principals) and all actors are uninformed about future contingencies. In such context, the Commission always prefers complete discretion while principals have to trade off the risk of agency losses against the need to give enough latitude to the Commission to deal with unexpected events. The analysis reveals a general trade-off in the institutional design of the European Union. On the one hand, the Commission can enjoy high and stable discretion, differing across legislative procedures, degree of uncertainty and of preference convergence, because of its monopoly proposal power. On the other hand, comitology procedures impose burdensome constraints on the Commission's autonomy and can be explained as a price for legislative intervention paid by the Commission. Finally, comitology procedures also increase the conflict across principals over the degree of discretion to grant to the Commission because the trade-off between ex ante discretion and ex post control can disappear with multiple principals.

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