Legal acts adopted by the Commission by this procedure are referred to in the Treaty as ‘delegated acts’. They are subject to the control of the European Parliament and the Council, who can veto the act during a given scrutiny period.
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WHAT ARE DELEGATED ACTS?
EU legislation often needs regular updates or further fine-tuning of technical details. That is why the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, in article 290, allows the legislator (the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union) to delegate to the European Commission the power to adopt legally binding acts to supplement or amend certain non-essential elements of a legislative act. Legal acts adopted by the Commission by this procedure are referred to in the Treaty as “delegated acts”. They are subject to the control of the European Parliament and the Council, who can veto the act during a given scrutiny period.
WHAT IS THE REGISTER?
The Inter-institutional Register of Delegated Acts gives access to the full lifecycle of delegated acts, from their planning to their publication in the Official Journal. It is therefore the one-stop shop for delegated acts, providing well-structured and user-friendly information to institutional users and the general public. It is a joint tool of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission.
WHY WAS IT SET UP?
The three institutions committed, in the Inter-institutional Agreement on Better Law-Making of April 2016, to jointly set up this register of delegated acts “to enhance transparency, to facilitate planning and to enable traceability of all the different stages in the lifecycle of a delegated act”. As such, it is the first joint tool in the field of decision-making and another step towards increased transparency, which will help citizens to follow the EU decision-making process.
HOW CAN I FOLLOW A DELEGATED ACT?
- Delegated acts are planned and prepared by the Commission.
- Drafts are prepared with the participation of Member State experts.
- Draft delegated acts are published for a 4-week public feedback period, with exceptions such as the need for urgent action or cases where public consultations already took place.
- Once a delegated act is adopted by the Commission, it is formally transmitted to the European Parliament and the Council for scrutiny.
- If none of the legislators objects, the act is published in the Official Journal and can enter into force.
This Register, available in all 24 official EU languages, gives you access to all these steps in a simple and well-structured way. It allows filtering and searching in specific policy areas or for specific legislative acts.
HOW CAN I BE KEPT INFORMED?
If you want to be able to receive notifications about the evolution of the files you are interested in, you will need to log in using your EU LOGIN credentials (and create an EU LOGIN account if you do not already have one). Once you log in, you can choose whether you want to receive e-mail notifications from the Register. You can select to be informed about delegated acts in a particular policy field, stemming from a particular legislative act, or an individual delegated act that is still being develop
Delegated acts are most common in the areas of financial services, agriculture, fisheries, environment and public health, EU's single market and trade. For example, monitoring methods for shipping emissions were fixed through a delegated act, as were transparency requirements for trading venues and investment firms.
Source: European Commission, fnanced by the ISA programme
