You’ll Eat it and You’ll Like it!

The EU’s Lisbon Treaty (Not to be confused with the Lisbon Strategy), it seems, has a Trojan Horse inside it. Laws, if passed by elected MEPs, can be simply re-written in closed committee as a part of the process of outlining the means of exercising those laws.

The system works like this: after an EU law has been agreed by the European Parliament and Council (after having been proposed by the Commission), the Commission, aided by national experts, still has room for manoeuvre in amending or adding to the Directive at a later date, with limited involvement from the European Parliament and the Council. Whenever a Directive says that something will be decided through "implementing measures",

Called “comitology,” it sounds very much like a term imported from France, one bound up with the far-left fantasies of a social state of lockstep action by the population.

The European Affairs Committee of the Danish Parliament has noted that the system of comitology “means that the Commission can adopt EU legislation against the will of a majority of Member States in the Council", saying “We find such a procedure undemocratic” and “Another problem with the comitology system is the short time made available for parliamentary scrutiny.”

And here’s the really sad part:

The word comitology is going to disappear! The only common element of understanding about it is going to be removed from the dictionary. From now on, people will talk of delegated acts (which replace quasi-legislative acts) and implementing acts (which replace comitology strictu sensu).

And it will simply be “assumed” to be part of the process that doesn’t need to be identified or mentioned. “Thank goodness!” Insiders must be thinking... “Democracy averted!” As for magnitude?

He concludes, "comitology represents about 98 percent of the regulatory activity of the Union in a year. And this 98 percent is the Commission's competence".

The author further notes that otherwise, the implementation of European construction would come to a standstill. Not quite. It’s those measures pushed through the Comity process that would come to a standstill, as only 2% of them seem to have the simplicity to become law on their own, or enough public support to not need revision.

What’s worse, is that the act of arguing and proposing those laws, absent the language of executable law, details, and enough information to determine the consequences from jump street, simply encourages irresponsibility and the unmooring of the caring sounding declarations from reality, as though it would be nice if every subject and serf should have their own unicorn ranch, and that it’s a human right, knowing that a committee is there it work out how to redefine a Unicorn and a Farm to be, say, a envelope with a stamp affixed to it.

It’s a moral hazard like no other.