REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

on the working of committees during 2020

In accordance with Article 10(2) of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 laying down the rules and general principles concerning mechanisms for control by Member States of the Commission’s exercise of implementing powers (the ‘Comitology Regulation’), the Commission hereby presents its annual report on the working of committees for 2020.

The report gives an overview of developments in the comitology system in 2020 and a summary of the committees’ activities. It is accompanied by a staff working document containing detailed statistics on the work of the individual committees.

1.Overview of developments in the comitology system in 2020

In 2020, the committees operated in accordance with the procedures set out in the Comitology Regulation, i.e. the advisory (Article 4) and the examination (Article 5), as well as the regulatory procedure with scrutiny set out in Article 5a of the Comitology Decision.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the measures taken to contain it severely limited the possibility of holding physical committee meetings. Most committee meetings were therefore held remotely. Remote meetings were treated as a committee meeting for the purposes of the Comitology Register. As a rule, remote committee meetings were used for discussing draft implementing acts and the vote was carried out by written procedure.

A new Comitology Register was launched on 28 October 2020. It continues to comply with the requirements set out in Article 10 of the Comitology Regulation, and it now offers improved search criteria and committee pages, thereby making it easier to find information. The Register of Delegated and Implementing Acts was also launched on 28 October 2020, thereby documenting in a single place the work of the Commission on the basis of empowerments received from the legislator.

As regards the regulatory procedure with scrutiny, the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making of 13 April 2016 recalls in its point 27 the need to align acts still refering to this procedure to the new legal framework introduced by the Lisbon Treaty.

In 2019, it was agreed to align 64 basic acts providing for the regulatory procedure with scrutiny to delegated and in a few cases implementing acts . After this partial agreement on the Commission’s proposal, interinstitutional negotiations are continuing on the alignment of the remaining basic acts included in the general Commission proposal and in its proposal concerning the area of justice. During 2020, negotiations did not progress due to the limitations related to COVID-19.

Negotiations are still ongoing on the Commission proposal from 14 February 2017 on a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending the Comitology Regulation (EU) No 182/2011. This proposal put forward a number of targeted changes to the functioning of the appeal committee to address no opinion situations in sensitive areas. The European Parliament adopted its negotiation mandate on the proposal on 17 December 2020.

As announced in the Better Regulation Communication, the Commission continues to publish draft texts for delegated and important implementing acts for a four weeks feedback period, allowing stakeholders to submit comments. In 2020, 66 such draft acts were published for public feedback on the Commission’s ‘Have your say’ website.

2.Overview of activities

2.1.Number of committees

This report focuses exclusively on comitology committees set up by the legislator to assist the Commission in the exercise of the implementing powers conferred upon it by basic legal acts. Other entities, in particular expert groups set up by the Commission itself, are not covered in this report.

In 2020, 322 comitology committees were active (see Table I). This number includes all the committee configurations. The figures for the previous year (on 31 December 2019) are also given for the purposes of comparison. There was only a very slight increase in the number of committees compared to 2019 (318).