EU Committee Governance and the Emerging Community Administration

[Introduction.] This chapter argues that an important fabric of EU administrative governance is the emerging multilevel community administration. This community administration integrates essential parts of national government institutions and important segments of the EU institutions. The study demonstrates that the domestic components of the community administration include the lower middle levels of the member-states’ ministries and agencies/directorates. At the EU-level the community administration covers the lower echelons of the Commission services, the Commission agencies, the Commission expert committees, the Council working parties, the comitology committees, and finally the national civil servants seconded to the Commission for shorter periods of time (Trondal 2004). Together, this community administration meshes and integrates executive institutions at two levels of government charged with responsibilities for policy initiation, policy decisions and policy implementation (Heywood and Wright 1997). This study highlights the development of a community administration within the three classes of EU committees referred to above. These committees integrate national civil servants into EU decision-making processes. They pose, however, different challenges to the decision-making behaviour, roles and loyalties among the officials attending these committee meetings. The survey data presented reveals that the institutional autonomy of the community administration is stronger within the European Commission than within the Council and the comitology setting. Hence, the picture of one unified community administration has to be sacrificed for the model of a multifaceted community administration balancing intergovernmental, functional and supranational dynamics. The data thus seriously challenges sweeping generalisations of administrative fusion and bureaucratic engrenage (Wessels 1998). This chapter also demonstrates that deliberative dynamics are not omnipotent within the comitology committees as asserted by Joerges and Neyer (1997)