Civil servants
The EU institutions employ more than 30,000 civil servants who co-operate with many more civil servants from the member states. Civil servants have a very strong role both in the national preparation process and in the EU. They effectively decide most laws behind closed doors without the presence of elected members of parliaments.
About 70% of all legislation is drawn up by working groups in the Council,15% by the ambassadors in COREPER, and only 15% depends on the Council of Ministers proper.
In the EU Commission, only 2 % of the decisions are taken by the Commission proper whereas around 25 % of decisions are taken by written procedure between the commissioners. The rest are effectively decided by individual commissioners or by civil servants of attached to Commissioner cabinets.
The Commission is currently running around 3000 secret working groups and the Council has some 300. The European Parliament is not happy about this situation, contending that these working groups possess too much power relative to their democratic accountability.
The website of the European Commission mentions 32,000 people working for the European Union. Official calculations of the number of staff working for the EU as a whole is actually 43,564. Research by the think-tank Open Europe even suggests that close to 170,000 people are in some way employed by the EU institutions.
The Lisbon Treaty provides to open all formal negotiations on legislation in Council meetings to the public. This may not cover the real negotiations on most EU laws and matters that take place in the working groups.
An EU diplomatic corps to strengthen the EU's representation abroad is being established. The existing 126 EU delegations will be turned into EU embassies.
The Lisbon Treaty has a new chapter on administrative cooperation among the member states.
Links
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=82
