Executive power(s)

Joana Mendes

Chapter 22 in Research Handbook on European Constitutional Law, 2026, pp 397-418 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter places the executive at the core of EU integration. It argues that the executive has been central to the articulation of power and counter-power in the EU, both within and beyond the Community method and traces how EU law and legal scholarship have grappled with the executive's role. The balance and tension between independence and representation were a common thread, from early debates on the possibilities of identifying an executive in the Communities, through the institutional practice of comitology, which invited a functional differentiation between a legislative and an executive power. The chapter then examines the post-2010 transformations in EU economic governance and the NGEU framework, which illustrate, first, the tensions between a constitutional ideal of a law-bound executive subject to parliamentary and judicial scrutiny, on the one hand, and the centrality of the EU executive for the evolution of the EU polity and its law. These developments underscore the limits of proceduralism and parliamentary control in securing democratic legitimacy of executive action, which were the preferred normative avenues to tame executive dominance in the period building up to, and following, the Lisbon Treaty reforms. The chapter concludes by calling for a realistic constitutional account that acknowledges the executive's foundational role in EU integration while critically assessing its implications for law and democracy.

Keywords: Executive dominance; Representation; Independence; Comitology; European and Monetary Union; NGEU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802207866
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