The Constitutional Legitimacy of the EU Committees

An impressive number of transnational committees populates theEU institutional system. Their statutes and internal regulations arealmost all unpublished, their composition and agendas are largelyunknown, their meetings inaccessible. Nevertheless, this almostimpenetrable «jungle» is actually the life force animating EU decisionmaking:all implementing measures are defined and approved by thecomitology committees; agreement on the substance of most legislativemeasures is reached at the level of Council working groups; theCommission’s power of initiative is exercised by – or, at least, sharedwith – committees composed of national officials. Is this seeminglytechnocratic nightmare radically unconstitutional? The answer I putforward in this paper is negative. After a brief discussion of the ECJ’sformalistic approach to the comitology issue, I shall argue that: a) thecommittee system coheres with a functional (or vertical) understanding ofthe principle of institutional balance anchoring the European compositesystem; b) in such a multi-level system, the existing mechanisms forensuring the accountability of administrative bodies cannot beunderstood by the classic hierarchical «transmission belt model»; c)notwithstanding recent improvements in the transparency and therationality of certain kinds of committees, there are still parts of thisjungle in which law’s legitimising potential remains hidden.