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I.FUNCTION
Article 145 of EU provides that:
To ensure that the objective set out in this treaty is attained, the Council shall, in accordance with the provision of this treaty.
---Ensure coordination of the general economic policies of the member states.
---Have power to take decisions.
---Confer on the commission, in the acts which the Council adopts, powers for the implementation of t he rules which the Council lay down…
Experience shows that development of community system has significantly extended the powers conferred on the Council, far from diminishing the range of it. At the same time, the widening of activities to be undertaken will bring the Council a further accretion of responsibilities, such as including covered by title V and title VI of the TEO (the second and third pillar of the EU).
In general terms the second indent of Article 145 EC refers to the Council''s power to take decisions. This has generally been indicative of the major function of the Council as being the principal legislative body of the community.And the word was chosen smartly, because the Council can adopt a whole variety of legally binding acts for different purposes under different provisions of he treaty.
First, the Council normally has the rights of final decision on the adoption of acts completing, developing or extending the body of primary laws contained in the ec treaty, whether for or against, so the commission has been given a right of decision independent of the Council very unusually in the ec system , and this tends to be in regard to matters on which basic rules and limiting its discretion are spelt out in the treaty.
Second, because the community system does not have a sole and separate legislature, there is also no institution having inherent executive powers for the implementation of legislation: unless a Council decision specially creates derived power, further development of its provisions will mean having recourse to the procedure laid down by the treaty. The third indent of Article 145 EC established that powers to implement Council measures should, as a general rule, be conferred on the commission ,but the Council may still ,in specific cases , reserve the rights to exercise directly implementing power itself. But if the Council want to exercise the implementing rights directly, the court of justice in a case has said that ''it must state in detail the grounds for such a decision ''. On matters of political sensitivity in several of the member states, it is easy to see why the Council should wish to retain a measure of control over the commission''s exercise of derived power, after all the Council is the representative of interest of member states.
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