The majority of rules adopted at the EU level are not issued by democratically elected institutions, but rather by administrative bodies which are empowered to exercise rule-making powers by legislative acts. This book analyses the legal mechanism through which these powers are conferred on the most relevant bodies in the EU institutional landscape, namely the European Commission, the Council, the ECB and EU agencies, and the democratic controls in place to limit and oversee the exercise of these powers. Providing an overarching perspective of the delegation of powers, this book reflects on the notion of delegation and on the commonalities between the different forms of delegation identified. It focuses on the legal requirements and limits for the delegating act, the procedures for the exercise of such powers, the position of the acts in the hierarchy of norms, and their judicial review. Overcoming the fragmentation which characterized the development of the different forms of delegation in the EU, this analysis provides a clear, structured, and coherent picture of the legal framework for the delegation of powers in the light of the constitutional principles of this legal system. Academics and practitioners will equally appreciate this highly accessible addition to the current debate in legal scholarship of the delegation of powers in the EU, as well as its explanations on comitology and the empowerment of EU agencies.

While the EU agencies that have been granted the power to adopt binding decisions are a diverse group, they at least share one feature: in all of them an organisationally separate administrative review body, i.e. a board of appeal, has been established. The review procedures before these boards must be exhausted before private parties can seize the EU courts and the boards therefore all fulfil a similar function: filtering cases before they end up before the courts and providing parties by expert-driven review. Sharing this common function as well as some common features, the boards of appeal of the different agencies remain heterogenous in their set up and functioning. This raises a host of questions from both a theoretic and practical perspective which this volume analyses in depth: how do the boards function, which kind of review do they offer, and how should they be conceptualized in the EU's overall system of legal protection against administrative action? To answer these questions, the volume's first part presents a series of case studies, covering all the EU boards of appeal currently in existence, while a second part looks into the horizontal issues raised by the phenomenon of the boards of appeal.