EU Committees: Social Regulation, Law and Politics

One of the striking features of the European Community's regulatory regimes is the role assigned to committees at all stages of the preparation of new measures and the implementation of its policies. Despite their obvious importance in the European polity, the 'comitology' of the EC has been understudied and poorly understood. This book fills a number of gaps in the literature by bringing together legal, political and policy analysts to examine the emergence of the committee role. For the European Parliament comitology represents obstacles to its own participation in policy making. For lawyers comitology is indicative of a strengthening of the administrative branch of government which seems to be evading parliamentary control and susceptibility to judicial review. These are the issues discussed and analysed in this book of original essays.