Influencing the EU: How decisions are made

To maximise your potential to influence decision making in the European Union (EU) it is important to understand how decisions are made. The three key institutions involved in decision making at the European level are the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. EU Treaties outline the scope of the EU and establish the rules and procedures for the decision making process.

Policy Areas

The EU is founded on the principle of conferral of competences, this means:

There are certain policy areas where the EU alone is able to make laws or has exclusive competence, such as agriculture, employment conditions and trade.
There are other areas when power is shared between the EU and member states known as shared competence, such as culture, environment, foreign affairs, transport and social policy.
Then there are areas where the EU has no scope, such as defence, education, tax and welfare.

So before thinking about influencing the EU it is important to find out where your issue sits and what scope the EU has to make decisions. The European Commission website has an entry point to information on EU policies and initiatives.

Codecision

About two thirds of laws made in the EU are made through the codecision procedure where legislative power is shared equally between the Parliament and the Council. Both institutions must agree for a new law to be passed. The Commission's proposal for new laws are first looked at and scrutinised by the Parliament.

There are two main types of EU laws:

Directives - are laws that do not apply directly in member states, so rather than dictations they are more general instructions leaving national parliaments to use their own national laws to achieve the result. This process is known as transposition.

Regulation - are laws that become immediately enforceable across the whole of the EU at the same time. Regulation does not need to be interpreted or transposed into national law.

With thanks to Europa publications.