POLITICS VERSUS SCIENCE: APPORTIONING ... - Buffalo State

From Harmonization to Comitology
The Commission, as guardian of the EC Treaty, regulates food safety in
cooperation with the regulatory agencies of the Member States. BSE and other food
scares propelled a little known policy area to the limelight, undermining the credibility of
Jacques Santer’s tenure as president of the Commission, empowering the European
Parliament, and strengthening the resolve of the newly installed Romano Prodi to make
the establishment of a European food authority his first priority (Randall 2001).
Table One, adapted from Dehousse (1997, 249), presents the four ways in which,
historically, policy has been implemented in the EU: harmonization; comitology and
approximation through European and international standardization agencies; comitology
coupled with independent agencies; and regulatory agencies/Commission advisory
committees.
Harmonization of food safety became increasingly important upon achievement
of the customs union, especially with the persistence of and emergence of new non-tariff
barriers between Member States. A single market based on information sharing and trust
relies upon adjudication of cases in the Courts—national, ECJ, and Court of First
Instance—in order to create a body of common law upon which the internal market can
be built. Importantly, the ECJ promulgated the principle of proportionality (in the Cassis
de Dijon) and the reliance on scientific expertise in the rendering of judgments with
regard to Article 36 of the EC. 6 While Cassis de Dijon signaled the beginning of the end
6 Article 30 stipulates that Member States may enact trade barriers if they can be justified on the grounds of
protecting health and consumer safety. This is the technical exception to Articles 28 & 29 (TEC
Consolidated Version), the latter establish the ground rules for free trade. (See Footnote #20 for text of
Article 30.)
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