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7. Decision-Making and New Forms of Governance
Abstract
All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter introduces the debate over new modes of decision-making and governance in the EU, and provides an account of the apparent shift towards greater use of these over time. The language of ‘new’ forms of governance in the EU refers to the move away from reliance on hierarchical modes towards more flexible modes as the preferred method of governing. A number of examples of new governance instruments and methods are provided, in particular the ‘new approach to harmonization’ and the ‘open method of coordination’. A number of other EU governance reform initiatives related to the new governance debate are also discussed, such as the subsidiarity and proportionality principles, the ‘better regulation’ initiative, and the Commission White Paper on Governance and its follow-up. The UK version contains a further section analysing issues of new governance in relation to the UK post-Brexit.
This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of EU nuclear safety governance (NSG) using a single case study approach. For the first part, the EU's nuclear safety architecture was examined applying a governance-theoretical framework. For the second and third part of this thesis, the central features of EU NSG were evaluated concerning EU NSG's effectiveness and legitimacy. Looking at the central features of the EU's nuclear safety architecture, it was found that EU NSG exhibits strong features of experimentalist governance. Broad safety goals are determined, the national regulatory authorities and nuclear operators are responsible for the implementation of those provisions, several peer reviews and reporting obligations are in place, and the results of those reviews are used to revise and improve the initial safety goals. A hierarchical element exists in form of the European Commission's ability to launch infringement proceedings. However, this poses no real threat to the MSs' autonomous decisionmaking concerning the concrete implementation as they remain the sole executives for EU nuclear safety directives. The evaluative analyses brought to light that the EU's performance concerning its effectiveness is suffering from a gap between the experimentalist manner in which policies and safety provisions are formulated and their actual implementation on the ground. Nevertheless, most of the obligatory measures are implemented and various good practices throughout the EU were documented over the years. As experimentalist governance blurs the boundaries between input, throughout, and output legitimacy, EU NSG was examined regarding its transparency and opportunities for public participation. It was found that the overall transparency level is quite positive. Particularly sensitive issues, such as complete incident reports, are not publicly available, which decreases the public's ability to hold the industry, governments, and the EU institutions fully accountable. In terms of EU NSG's input legitimacy a mixed picture emerged. While manifold opportunities exist for the public to take part in decision-making or review processes, EU citizens are not using them as much as they could. It was concluded that the overall performance of EU NSG is good, regarding both its effectiveness and legitimacy, but improvements should be made in the future on a continuous basis.
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