The Hierarchy of Norms Post-Lisbon: Law and Politics

The paper will examine the key legal difficulties with the division between legislative, delegated and implementing acts in the post-Lisbon world, and will consider the political forces that underlie the new regime. The new regime on the hierarchy of norms was intended to simplify the classification of legal acts as compared with the position under the EC Treaties. It is however doubtful whether this has been achieved and in any event the classification in the Lisbon Treaty was 'driven' by an underlying political agenda that concerns Comitology.