Managing the Dilemma of Discretion: The European Commission and the Development of EU State Aid Policy

This article examines the role played by the European Commission in the development of the European Union\u27s (EU) state aid policy. It does so through the prism of a \u27dilemma\u27 that exists at the nexus of the Commission\u27s delegated authority to administer EU treaty state aid provisions, the discretion conferred on Commission authorities by the imprecise language in which those provisions are written, and the political and institutional control mechanisms EU member governments use to influence the exercise of that discretion. Examining Commission efforts to manage this dilemma over the history of the EU, we provide evidence to illustrate how the Commission\u27s approach adapted to shifting economic and political conditions

European Biotechnology Regulation: Framing the Risk Assessment of a Herbicide-Tolerant Crop

As products of the "new biotechnology," genetically modified organisms have provoked a wide-ranging risk debate on potential harm, especially from herbicide-tolerant crops. In response to this legitimacy problem, the European Community adopted precautionary legislation, which left open the definition of environmental harm. When the U.K. proposed Europe-wide market approval of a herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape (canola), the proposal encountered dissent from some countries and environmentalisi groups. Further debate on normative judgments became necessary to implement the precaution- ary legislation. In dispute were several regulatory boundaries-of administrative re- sponsibility, causality, acceptability, and evidence. The boundary disputes expressed divergent framings of biotechnological risk, each with its implicit model of the socionatu- ral order In this way, the disputes can illuminate the sorts of risk framings that have already become embedded and standardized in other regulatory sectors