New proposals to reform European Governance 

The Report on European Governance reviews the progress achieved over the past 16 months with regard to governance issues. It shows that the Commission has already developed and launched the majority of the actions proposed in the White Paper. A public consultation had been launched following the publication of the White Paper and ran through 31 March 2002. The Commission reports that the response to its public consultation "was modest in numbers (260 contributions) but rich in content." It is worth noting that some EU institutions and Member States did not contribute to the consultation. Similarly, a geographical imbalance across the EU was in evidence as regards contributions, perhaps reflecting differences in public consultation culture and tradition.

The Commission reports that the public response largely supports the White Paper's definition of the principles underlying European governance of openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. Part of the public response regrets the apparent limits of the White Papers understanding of "governance" which focuses predominantly on the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU decision-making system. The Commission was seen to disregard issues of democratic legitimacy and democratic deficit in European integration. The principles of democratic legitimacy and subsidiarity thus have been proposed as additions to the underlying principles.

The public consultation supported the following key governance approaches of the Commission:

• improving bottom-up involvement in EU policy shaping and implementation;
• widening the choice of instruments to respond to new governance challenges;
• more focused European institutions with clearer responsibilities.

The Commission's new communications include proposals for:

• improved quality of control as regards the application of legislation: the duty of the Commission "as guardian of the Treaties" will become more relevant in the perspective of enlargement;
• a "more balanced" implementing committee system, or so-called 'comitology';
• a framework for new regulatory agencies;
• the use of "tripartite conventions and contracts" with local, regional, national authorities for a more "adapted and flexible" implementation of EU legislation and programmes.