The legislative power

The evolutions enclosed in the Lisbon Treaty, and confirmed by the 2014 European elections, allow people to describe the European Union (EU) regime as a quadripartite system, in which the executive power is composed of the European Council and the Commission, and where the legislative power consists of the European Parliament and the Council. This chapter deconstructs the organization into six main components: the Presidency, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the configurations, the General Secretariat, the COREPER and special committees and, finally, the groups and committees. Until 2011, there were four types of committees: advisory committees, management committees, regulatory committees and regulatory committees with scrutiny. The latter were introduced in July 2006: in matters subject to co-decision, the two branches of the legislative power were placed on an equal footing regarding their ability to control the Commission’s use of its conferred powers of enforcement.