POLITICS VERSUS SCIENCE: APPORTIONING ... - Buffalo State

State regulatory authorities, the Commission’s regulatory committee, and EFSA, offers a
new approach to governing that merits close examination. At the same time, it provides a
window into the policy preferences of scientists, on one hand, and politicians, on the
other.
A story of institutional building as intriguing as illuminating, it begins as early as
1996 with the European Parliament’s setting up of a temporary committee of inquiry into
the BSE scandal (Buonanno and Nugent, 2002: 10) and by 2002 concludes with the EP
and the Council assigning responsibility for risk assessment to a newly-created European
independent authority, while preserving competency for (emergency) risk communication
and management in a regulatory committee. Thus entwining the EFSA in the complex
comitology system that, while managed by the European Commission, is
intergovernmental in membership, rule-making, and oversight. 2
The path to EFSA was taken, at least in the first faltering steps, inductively, with
no less than three reorganizations of the regulatory regime. Yet to be written is the
assessment of this new regulatory structure. While in these early days our work must be
impressionistic, we can be guided in our understanding of the course of events; first, in
the debates that took place from 1999-2002 over the design of the new regulatory regime,
and second, middle-range theories (policy networks, multi-level governance, and a
distinct strand of neo-institutionalism that focuses on actor interactions between and
within the Member States and the EU) that are increasingly brought to bear on our
understanding of EU policy-making, especially in the EC Pillar.
2 For a discussion of regulatory committees, see Nugent (2003: 136-139). He writes that “regulatory
committees must give their approval for Commission decisions by QMV.” Regulatory committees are
comprised of representatives of the Member States, chaired by a Commission representative.
2