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2 Theory & Prac. Legis. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/thorceleg2 and id is 1 raw text is: DOI: 10.5235/2050-8840.2.1.1 INTRODUCTION: SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE LEGITIMACY OF EU DELEGATED ACTS AND IMPLEMENTING ACTS - WHAT HAVE THE LISBON INNOVATIONS BROUGHT US? Wim Voermans & Josephine M.R. Hartmann* The legitimacy of delegated or - worldwide more commonly labelled 'secondary' - legislation is a classic controversial issue in most parliamentary liberal democracies, and especially so in the EU. Due to different challenges the EU has seen an influx of delegated/secondary legislation over the past decades (nowadays falling under two categories: 'delegated' acts proper under article 290 TFEU and implementing acts under article 291 TFEU). Binding citizens, organisations and enterprises through legislative norms that are not directly democratically underpinned - at least not in the way we are used to in democratic nation-states - raises important legitimacy questions. In the EU various institutions have been set up to overcome the 'democratic gaps' that supranational legislation may cause. The Treaty of Lisbon - for that very reason - establishes a democratically underpinned legislature along the lines of what we are more or less familiar with in national (EU Member) states. There is a - still small - body of literature that studies the effect of these institutional post-Lisbon arrangements and the way they do or do not contribute to the overall legitimacy Most of the time, this literature is centred on the position of the European Parliament and the national parliaments in the EU legislative process. The bulk of EU legislation (some 80%), at this moment, is not developed by the democratically underpinned 'ordinary' legislature, involving the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament in the enactment of legislation (article 294 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU), but rather by the Commission on the basis of a delegation in primary legislation (regulations or directives enacted in the ordinary legislative procedure of article 294 TFEU). This so-called EU secondary legislation is voluminous and enacted by the Commission, a body without a direct democratic mandate. Although all modem political systems face legitimacy problems when administrations or government agencies without a democratic mandate develop norms, the EU's post-Lisbon regime on delegated legislation throws up very specific conundrums. Under the pre-Lisbon * Wim Voermans is Professor of Constitutional Law and Director of the Institute of Public Law at the Leiden Law School and director of the profile area Political Legitimacy of Leiden University; Josephine M.R. Hartmann is a PhD student of Leiden Law School and a researcher in Leiden's profile area Political Legitimacy.

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