Miroslava Scholten – EU Law Enforcement

John Vervaele’s farewell speech and legacy in the field of enforcement of EU laws

On March 10, 2023, prof. John Vervaele has given his farewell speech ‘Towards a European Reassessment of Punitive Enforcement’ at the Aula of Utrecht University. In this blog post, I am discussing the main ideas of his speech and career – Europeanisation of EU law enforcement – and, in this way, I aim at giving my personal gratitude to prof. Vervaele. It has been a great honour and pleasure of working with you, John!

Recommendations for ensuring controls for shared enforcement in the EU

Shared direct enforcement of EU laws is a relatively new phenomenon in the EU. If the default rule of enforcing EU laws at the national level faces challenges, it is logical to enhance the regulation of national enforcement and/or the exercise of enforcement stages at the same level where EU rules are established (functional policy cycle over spillover). Hence, we witness a proliferation of EU enforcement authorities (EEAs) which can enforce EU laws directly vis-à-vis private actors themselves or together with national competent authorities. This development prompts to address the question of control over actions and decisions resulting from this EU shared direct enforcement. This blog post argues that the EU shared enforcement necessitates aligning of the systems of controls (EU-national, national-national) and creating ‘joint controllers’. It uses the logic of the ‘Meroni+’ (non-) delegation doctrine to support its argument. It concludes with three recommendations for assessing and (re)designing controls for EU shared enforcement.

Shared Tasks, but Separated Controls. How to build a system of control for EU shared administration?

Based on: ‘Shared Tasks, but Separated Controls: Building the System of Control for Shared Administration in an EU Multi-Jurisdictional Setting’, EJRR, 2019.

In my first blog post for this blog page, I signaled a rapid proliferation of EU enforcement authorities (EEAs). These EEAs are an example of a growing administration of shared tasks – regulatory and enforcement – in the EU. The establishment of these complex, multi-level governance structures and decision-making procedures is necessary to address “wicked problems” (think, for instance, about the need to protect environment), which require cooperation of and involvement of various stakeholders. Establishing these complex structures and procedures requires in turn sophisticated systems of controls over public power to safeguard the rule of law. How to build such a system? My main argument is that it is through a framework in which a number of elements need to be connected. These elements include:

relevant concepts of control (accountability, protection of fundamental rights, etc);
types of controls (political, judicial, etc) that these concepts may represent;
analytical prisms that they may create (institutional, decision-driven and rights-driven); and
systems of controls belonging to different jurisdictions/legal orders in the EU (EU-national and national-national).

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Mind the trend! Direct enforcement of EU law and policies is moving to ‘Brussels’

A sealed sign with the EU flag does not automatically mean ‘sealed by the EU Commission’ anymore. The number of EU entities acquiring direct enforcement powers has grown from one to eight recently. The first post of this blog puts on the map and raises awareness of an ongoing development in the EU law and governance – proliferation of EU enforcement authorities (EEAs) – which so far has been unnoticed. The aim is to launch a discussion of the aims, means and challenges of this development to understand and contribute to shaping of effective and secure law enforcement in the EU.

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