Part I
Florin COMAN-KUND, Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Candidate, The European Commission as main actor in the EC legislative process: the case of the Internal Market
This paper analyses the position of the European Commission in the increasingly complex EC decision-making system. In order to have a complete picture of this topic, formal as well as the informal prerogatives of the Commission in the legislative process of the European Community need to be examined. On the one hand, the formal prerogatives of the Commission have apparently been diminished by the involvement of the European Council in the EC agenda-setting through the participation of other actors in the legislative process and the increased legislative role of the European Parliament. But, on the other hand, along its formal prerogatives, the Commission relies more and more extensively on informal instruments; this approach seems to enable the Commission to overcome the formal constraints set upon its legislative powers. By using its formal and informal powers, the Commission is able to set the agenda of the EC, to persuade the relevant actors and, generally, to guide to a certain extent the whole decision-making process. It can be concluded, therefore, that the Commission can still be considered a main actor – if not the main actor – in the EC decision-making process. This is the more so in the field of the Internal Market, where the European Commission has determined to a great extent the course of the legislative action in order to foster the development of this Community policy.
Keywords: the EC legislative process, the community method, the European Commission, formal and informal powers, the right to initiate legislative proposals, the Internal Market
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