NOMOKRATOS vzw
Welke methodiek zouden rechtbanken bij de toetsing van wetgeving moeten gebruiken?
Een analyse van de voor- en nadelen.
Door Manuel Dierickx Visschers
Nomokratos vzw
September 2019
Abstract
For the moment, the importance of judicial review of legislation seems to grow. But how this review has to be done, is not completely clear yet, because judges are caught up in a dilemma. On the one hand, many judges realize that there is a need for judicial protection of individual liberties, but on the other, judges fear of being accused of judicial activism.
In their deliberations, courts take the way legislation was developed under consideration in order to determine whether or not the legislation violates constitutional rights. More particularly, courts will look for indications whether the government has gathered enough empirical evidence and has consulted the stakeholders in a sufficient way in order to proof that the legislation is necessary and proportionate.
This approach is called the process-oriented judicial review. We explain in chapter two what this approach means, including the semi-procedural variant. This kind of review is also used by the European Court of Justice, so in chapter three, we look explore why and how the Court has become a proponent of this approach.
But on closer look, the fundamental question remains to what extent process-oriented review leads to an actual protection of individual liberties and rights against excessive political pursuits of public interests. Some scholars have serious doubts about this, as we explain in chapter four what their reasons are.
In the fifth and final chapter, the study concludes from a viewpoint of the ‘checks and balances’ that a substantial judicial review of legislation remains necessary, though a process-oriented review can promote an effective collection of the much needed factual evidence. To that end, this study presents a review model in order to perform in a substantial way the core tests of necessity and proportionality of regulation.
Inhoudsopgave
I. Inleiding en situatieschets
II. Wat houdt een procesgerichte rechterlijke toetsing precies in?
II.1. Het wat en waarom van de procesgerichte rechterlijke toetsing
II.2. De semi-procedurele variant
III. De EU en de procedurele toetsing: a match made in heaven?
III.1. De warrige democratische besluitvorming binnen de EU
III.2. Het Europees Hof van Justitie en procesgerichte toetsing
IV. De problematische kanten van de procedurele toetsing
IV.1. De inherente pijnpunten van de semi-procedurele toetsing
IV.2. Nihil nove sub sole?
V. Een inhoudelijke rechterlijke toetsing blijft noodzakelijk
V.1. Enkele inzichten uit de rechtsleer
V.2. Een voorstel tot inhoudelijke toetsing
__________________________________
I. Inleiding en situatieschets
De scheiding én het evenwicht tussen de drie staatsmachten is cruciaal voor onze individuele vrijheden en voor het algemeen welzijn van onze samenleving. Dit was een, soms pijnlijk, groeiproces: “Over the centuries, societies have acquired institutions designed to guarantee the freedom of their members, defined as the absence of coercion by the government (Hayek 1960). Central among these institutions is checks and balances, defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as the principle of government under which separate branches are empowered to prevent actions by other branches and are induced to share power.”[1] Samen met de democratische besluitvorming vormt de rechtsstaat de twee steunpilaren van de vrijheidsstaat ter bescherming van onze individuele grondrechten vrijheden.
Een belangrijk element binnen dit evenwicht is zowel het bestaan als de concrete werking van een onafhankelijke rechterlijke macht: “A special role in the Anglo-American thinking on checks and balances is played by the courts (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 1788; Hayek 1960; Buchanan 1974). Hayek distinguishes two ways in which the judiciary can limit the power of other branches. First, the creation of laws and the administration of justice can be separated. Legislatures make laws, but independent judges enforce them, without interference from the legislature or the executive. Second, law making and policy making can themselves be subject to review by courts for their compliance with the constitution.”[2] Beide aspecten zijn cruciaal voor de werking van een democratische rechtsstaat.
Het meest bekend én aanvaard binnen onze westerse samenlevingen is de onafhankelijkheid van de rechters: “Theoretically, judicial independence and constitutional review work in different ways. When the executive does not control judges, they are not as partial to his wishes. According to Alexander Hamilton, ‘nothing can contribute so much to [the judiciary’s] firmness and independence as permanency in office’ (Federalist Papers, no. 78). Judicial independence has obvious value for securing property and political rights when the government is itself a litigant, as in the takings of property by the state. But judicial independence is also socially valuable in purely private disputes when one of the litigants is politically connected and the executive wants the court to favour its ally. In principle, judicial independence promotes both economic and political freedom, the former by resisting the state’s attempts to take property, the latter by resisting its attempts to suppress dissent.”[3]
Meer controversieel is de groeiende rechterlijke toetsing van democratisch gelegitimeerde wetgeving:“Besides seeking to influence judges, the executive and the legislature would also wish to pursue policies and pass laws that benefit themselves, democratic majorities, or allied interest groups. Constitutional review is intended to limit these powers. By checking laws against a rigid constitution, a court – particularly a supreme or a constitutional court – can limit such self-serving efforts. In effect, courts rather than legislators become final arbiters of what is law. Because constitutional review is used to counter the tyranny of the majority, it may be of particular benefit in securing political and human rights, as well as preserving democracy. F. ex., while the U.S. Supreme Court has long accepted the government’s power to tax and regulate various activities, it has been more active in protecting political rights.”[4] Het is op deze rechterlijke toetsing dat we ons nu zullen focussen.
Vooraleer hieraan te beginnen is het wel cruciaal voor ogen te houden dat de voordelen van de rechterlijke toetsing voor de samenleving geen ideologisch gedachtenspinsel zijn, maar net gebaseerd op harde feiten: “Consistent with the hypotheses of Hayek and others, we find that both judicial independence and constitutional review are strong predictors of freedom. We find that judicial independence is important for both kinds of freedom, whereas constitutional review matters for political freedom.”[5] en “At the broadest level, our results provide strong empirical support for ideas going back to Locke, the Federalist Papers, and Hayek and enthusiastically revived in recent popular writings (Ferguson 2003; Zakaria 2003), which see the Anglo-American institutions of checks and balances as important guarantees of freedom.”[6] Maar wat houdt deze rechterlijke toetsing van wetgeving precies in, en meer nog, wat zou ze moeten inhouden om deze politieke en economische vrijheden te vrijwaren? Dat is de centrale vraag die we in deze studie behandelen.
Een mogelijk antwoord ligt in een rechterlijke toetsing die de kwaliteit van de democratische besluitvormingsproces centraal stelt. Volgens de Israëlische rechtsgeleerde Bar-Siman-Tov is deze vorm van rechterlijke toetsing in volle ontwikkeling: “Recent scholarship reveals a fascinating cross-national phenomenon: the gradual infiltration of procedural review into constitutional adjudication. Indeed, different scholars have recently identified a ‘procedural trend’ in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the European Court of Justice (ECJ), national constitutional courts in Europe, and the U.S. Supreme Court. This procedural turn has not been toward ‘pure’ procedural judicial review, in which courts focus exclusively on the enactment process and strike down legislation based solely on procedural defects in that process. Instead, courts are increasingly examining the legislature’s decision-making process as part of their determination of the substantive constitutionality of legis-lation. Hence, we appear to be witnessing the emergence of a novel judicial review model that merges procedural judicial review with substantive judicial review. While this model is relatively new, and not yet fully defined, it has already generated much controversy.”[7]
De Belgische professor grondwettelijk recht Patricia Popelier wijt deze ontwikkeling aan het recente hervormingsbeleid tot verbetering van de wetgevingskwaliteit: “The past decades witnessed the emergence of regulatory reform programs worldwide, leading to a proceduralization of the decision making process. The legal implications thereof have been explored in scholarship, but did not yet grow into topical issues of academic debate. Yet, in practice, administrative process review by courts is gradually developing into a broader technique of constitutional adjudication. Proportionality analysis takes procedural requirements into account, in particular when broad deference hinders a substantive assessment of legislation, leading to a point of convergence of regulatory reform and process review.”[8] Popelier stelt dus vast hoe de rechterlijke toetsing van wetgeving aan de grondwet uit de bestuursrechtspraak voortgekomen is, waarbij regelgeving van de uitvoerende macht getoetst wordt aan de democratisch gelegitimeerde wetgeving. Op een gelijkaardige manier zijn de beginselen van behoorlijke wetgeving voortgekomen uit deze van behoorlijk bestuur.
Popelier wijst echter meteen op het controversiële karakter van deze evolutie door een vijftal problematische aspecten ervan te vermelden: “At first sight, the shift to judicialization of regulatory reform tools is far from obvious, for several reasons.
Firstly, regulatory reform on the one hand and judicial review on the other pursue different objectives. Regulatory reform is unequivocally linked to policy goals of competitiveness, innovation and economic growth. The question then rises whether the judicialization of regulatory reform tools implies a market-liberal bias, contrary to expectations of judicial neutrality.
Secondly, policy makers are obviously not in favour of judicialization. On the contrary, the European Commission expressed its preference for soft law as a tool for the implementation of the EU regulatory program, because legal rules ‘would create excessive rigidity and risk slowing the adoption of particular policies’. In the U.S., indeed, intensive judicial review of the rationality of agency policies is criticized for having turned the notice-and-comment-rulemaking into ‘a burdensome, sclerotic process’. Excessive judicialization, then, might lead to ossification of regulatory reform.
Thirdly, the European Commission’s quote reveals the twofold role of soft law in regulatory reform. On the one hand, regulatory requirements are laid down in soft law such as administrative guidelines and procedures. On the other hand, regulatory reform increasingly turns to soft law as an alternative for traditional regulatory tools. Soft law and judicial review make an uncomfortable pair, with soft law usually confined to its use as an aid to the interpretation of open textured terms or legal principles, but in some cases given more far-reaching legal effect by courts. […]
Fourthly, a legal duty to give scientific evidence to support legislative choices and assertions may deprive political primacy, when scientific reasoning threatens to replace political decision making. Democratic legitimacy requires a degree of due deference towards legislative choices, consisting in a balancing act of different values and priorities.
A last objection concerns the limited capacities of courts to judge the quality of administrative procedures within the regulatory process. It has been suggested that other professions than lawyers are better placed to assess the evidence-based quality of the regulatory process. In this regard, the European Commission draws attention to the Impact Assessment Board, which offers an independent expert review of impact assessments, while remaining nested within the internal administrative decision-making process.”[9]
Daarom bekijken we in deze studie of en in welke mate de ‘procesgericht’ of procedurele’ toetsing van wetgeving wel degelijk een oplossing kan bieden voor het cruciale spanningsveld dat rechterlijke toetsing van wetgeving met zich meebrengt, namelijk de bescherming van de rechtsstaat met zijn individuele grondrechten enerzijds versus de vrijwaring van de democratische besluitvorming ten bate van het algemeen belang anderzijds. Hiertoe behandelen we in het volgende hoofdstuk wat deze procesgerichte toetsing concreet inhoudt en wat zijn drijfveren zijn. We vermelden hierbij ook uitgebreid een speciale variant hiervan, namelijk de semi-procedurele toetsing. Vervolgens passen we in het derde hoofdstuk deze inzichten op de rechtspraak van het Europees Hof van Justitie waar blijkt dat de procedurele toetsing wordt toegepast.
In het vierde hoofdstuk gaan we dieper in op de tegenkantingen of schaduwzijden van deze vorm van rechterlijke toetsing. Enerzijds rijst de vraag in welke mate een rechter überhaupt moet interpreteren bij zijn toetsing. Anderzijds kunnen we grote vraagtekens plaatsen bij het pleidooi om de inhoudelijke rechterlijke toetsing te vervangen door een semi- of meer procesgerichte toetsing van wetgeving. Het vijfde en laatste hoofdstuk bevat een voorstel van een inhoudelijke toetsing van wetgeving wanneer ze overgaat tot het gebruik van dwingende maatregelen die de individuele grondrechten en basisvrijheden (kunnen) aantasten. Hierdoor wordt de procedurele toetsing herleid tot een waardevolle aanvulling van de inhoudelijke toetsing, namelijk in het leveren van de nodige bewijsvoering die op de overheid rust.
II. Wat houdt procesgerichte rechterlijke toetsing precies in?
II.1. Het wat en waarom van de procesgerichte rechterlijke toetsing
De procesgerichte toetsing van wetgeving is voortgekomen uit rechterlijke beslissingen, en vormt dus geen politieke of beleidskeuze. Popelier verwijst hiervoor naar de rechtspraak van supranationale rechtscolleges: “The ECtHR case law reveals that better regulation tools are used as indicators to assess the reasonable or justified nature of laws affecting fundamental rights. In particular, they shape arguments of procedural rationality as a part of the proportionality analysis inherent to fundamental rights review. This enables courts to exercise […] ‘semiprocedural judicial review’. […] [T]he same trend is reflected in the case law of national constitutional courts, as well as the European Court of Justice, throughout the full scope of constitutional jurisdiction.”[10]
Popelier wijst op het bestaan van een cruciale analogie tussen economische concepten en juridische begrippen als een belangrijke drijfveer voor deze ontwikkeling: “Hence, more is at stake than the incorporation of human rights protection as another finality of the better regulation program. Instead, economic efficiency standards are inserted in the legal proportionality principle. Better regulation programs regard efficiency and effectiveness as key principles or quality standards. Regulatory tools operationalize these standards through procedural requirements. For instance, impact assessment procedures generally consist of multiple steps, implying (i) a problem analysis, (ii) determination of objectives and (iii) the development, impact analysis and comparison of alternative options. The proportionality analysis, rooted in German administrative and constitutional law and applied by European and constitutional courts, generally involves four steps. The contested measure must (i) pursue a legitimate objective, (ii) be suitable, i.e. in a causal relation with this objective, (iii) necessary, i.e. not curtailing rights more than necessary given alternative options and (iv) be proportional in a strict sense: even in the absence of a valid alternative, the benefits must outweigh the costs incurred by the infringement of the right. The similarities between the latter two proportionality requirements and economic efficiency and effectiveness standards are striking, to the extent that effectiveness has been called a contemporary constitutional principle. Regulatory tools, then, in operationalizing efficiency and effectiveness standards, simultaneously operationalize the proportionality principle.”[11] Het is trouwens net dit evenredigheidsbeginsel dat ook de overstap van de toetsing van bestuurshandelingen naar deze van wetgeving mogelijk gemaakt heeft.
Nochtans is het geen sinecure om het democratisch verkozen parlement te verplichten de opmaak van wetgeving zorgvuldig aan te pakken: “Regulatory procedures allow parliament to decide on the basis of an informed parliamentary debate. Ultimately, the extent to which process review is accepted, depends upon the conception of democratic rule or legitimacy dominant within a given legal system. The idea that parliament should act as a forum of rational and informed deliberation has more affinity with a deliberative notion of democracy than with a principled concept of parliamentary sovereignty. Also, the contemporary notion of new constitutionalism, with an emphasis on fundamental rights and constitutional review, is more inclined to accept process review as a means to ensure that Parliament acts as a ‘responsible and accountable legislature’, protecting the individual against arbitrary interference. Finally, legal systems with an incomplete parliamentary system, such as the European Union, will be more inclined to embrace alternative legitimacy concepts based upon notions of input and output legitimacy. In its White Paper on European Governance the European Commission lays down the foundation of its Better Regulation program not only with objectives of economic policy in mind, but also in terms of legitimacy.”[12] Op dit laatste aspect komen we zo meteen nog terug.
De drijvende kracht achter deze ontwikkeling vormt volgens Popelier het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens: “For the ECtHR, which puts pluralism and public debate at the core of its concept of democratic society, parliament is pre-eminently a forum for public debate. This justifies the special regime that members of parliament enjoy, including immunity. Hence, when a law is approved which seriously interferes with fundamental rights, it is considered as democratically flawed if parliament has not at least engaged in a public debate, considering the matter in the light of the various rights and interests.”[13] Achteraf bekeken, is dit wellicht geen verrassing aangezien het Hof als een supranationale instelling weinig tot geen voeling heeft met de intrinsieke koppeling tussen een democratisch gelegitimeerd parlement en de staatssoevereiniteit.
Vervolgens rijst de vraag welke de belangrijkste bestaansreden van de procesgerichte toetsing vormt. Dit blijkt de vrijwaring van het democratische besluitvormingsproces, of van de democratische systeem meer algemeen, te zijn. Hieromtrent is het dan wel nodig te weten wat men onder democratie begrijpt. In een ander artikel gaat Popelier hier dieper op in: “Democracy shapes the way in which government exercises power. Although the form and concept of democracy have shifted over time, two elements have remained constant. The first element is participation of the people in collective decision making as a way to obtain political freedom. The other is the idea of rationality. Rational beings are autonomous and sensible beings, capable of making their own plans and decisions on a rational basis and thus taking responsibility for their own decisions. As rational beings, they should be guided by rational law. Irrational law interferes with people’s autonomy and therefore lacks legitimacy. Rational law on the other hand is issued by a rational and therefore accountable law maker.”[14] Merk hierbij de analogie met het natuurrecht op, namelijk recht dat in overeenstemming is met (de verheven kant van) de menselijke natuur.
Centraal staan dus de concepten van rationaliteit en zorgvuldigheid: “The concept of rationality however, like the concept of democracy, evolves. The legality principle, including the presumption that the law is clear, effective and in accordance with reality and societal values, rules in legal orders which are described as Cartesian organizations with full control and complete knowledge of all relevant facts. Reality however, has turned out to be far more complex and dynamic. Relations emerge and dissolve in a spontaneous way, not all determinant factors or their mutual influences being known or recognizable. Rationality therefore refers to a minimal form of coherence between desires, beliefs and actions. It includes the ability to be flexible and responsive to relevant changes in one’s situation and environment, the ability to perceive and weigh facts and to act for good reasons. In this complex environment the legality principle is supplemented with the principle of effectiveness. This has given rise to the emergence of legislative studies, trying to rationalize legislative methods and processes. Included in the relativist conception is the understanding that rational law makers do not make perfect decisions. They should, however, adopt responsive and justifiable decisions.”[15] Rationaliteit wordt hier dus meer begrepen als een vloeiend proces dan als een vastomlijnd product.
Deze vorm van rationaliteit brengt ons dan ook dichter bij de rechterlijke toetsing van het totstandkomingsproces van wetgeving: “The relativist concept of rationality connects to pluralism. It acknowledges the existence of various rationalities of individuals and groups of individuals. The real challenge is to bring these rationalities together in a collective decision making process which results in decisions accepted by all individuals and groups of individuals as legitimate. To this end, Popper’s definition of rationalism as an attitude of willingness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience is helpful. In a plural concept of democracy the readiness towards argumentation and correction is enhanced as decision making is drawn from a melting-pot of opinions and interests. This turns democracy into an ongoing process of rationalization in an endeavor to find the optimum congruence amongst various rationalities. In a multi-level context this has become even more complex, as a balance must be found between multiple identities and between the interests of national, subnational and global or supranational levels. Endeavors to shape a concept of democracy adjusted to this new setting are deliberative democracy and the idea of ‘governance’. A deliberative model of democracy provides for legitimacy through arguments in debates which can be held at various levels. In order to qualify a decision as ‘legitimate’, everyone affected by this decision should be able to participate in an effective deliberation concerning this decision, which makes it accountable towards everyone. Key principles are participation, transparency and justification. Underlying is the idea that democracy is a communicative process building political decisions through deliberation rather than the simple aggregation of fixed preferences.”[16] Het daadwerkelijk proces van het belangenoverleg en de uitwisseling van standpunten is dus belangrijker dan het vinden van een politieke meerderheid om een bepaalde beleidsbeslissing door te drukken.
Hierdoor verandert ook het bestuursmodel van een overheid: “These ideas return in a model of governance which embraces the disintegration of the central state into a more complex network of decision making levels which state actors and non-state actors. In a governance model central institutions give way to a network community. Moreover public and private spheres become intertwined, which implies that non-state actors emerge at various levels of government action: private actors become stakeholders who participate and collaborate with the rulemaking in a spirt of cooperation. In this line of thought, Brown and Scott argue […] for reflexive lawmaking as a more deliberative form of regulatory policy. This should make possible tailored regulations which answer to public values while recognizing private interests. As Lobel has argued, ‘a key strength of the new governance model is its explicit suggestion that economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy can be mutually reinforcing’. Similar to the model of deliberative democracy, the governance model is centered upon continued and inclusive dialogue and the building of mutual understanding. In this governance model the European level connects with (national, regional and local) authorities on the one hand and with private actors and the people at large – although often reduced to ‘stakeholders’ – on the other. Deliberative democracy relies in full representation, transparency, balance of interests and justification of decisions to guarantee the democratic quality of collective decision making. In a governance model this set is completed with criteria linked to the network of state and non-state actors: notions of collaboration, subsidiarity, non-coerciveness and adaptability. To this end a governance model includes extensive participatory and consultation processes.”[17] Dus niet zozeer het democratisch kunnen stemmen over een beleidsmaatregel, maar wel de transparantie, de zorgvuldige afweging van belangen en de afdoende verantwoording van de genomen beslissing zijn cruciaal voor de rechterlijke toetsing.
Een ander belangrijk argument voor het gebruik van de procesgerichte toetsing, dat trouwens in het verlengde van het vorige ligt, vormt het “‘better placed’ argument, referring to the superior expertise or capacity of the legislature to take the best decisions, is often used in order to refute judicial review in general or to justify wide deference. Process review then, accepts the legislator’s superiority, however, by demanding that laws are evidence-based, requires the legislature to convince the court that the law was indeed enacted on the basis of its superior expertise or democratic credentials. Besides […], judges are often better informed about the actual impact of legislation than the legislator, acting on the basis of incomplete information and prognoses of future effects. ‘Better placed’ arguments gain strength when hard law imposes the use of specific regulatory tools, or when procedural guidelines laid down in soft law are considered self-binding. For example, does the mandate of the French Conseil Constitutionnel to check whether a bill introduced in Parliament is accompanied by an impact analysis, imply a methodological assessment in order to qualify an investigation as an impact assessment in the sense of Article 8 of the Loi organique? If so, is the Court equipped to do so, and if not, would this reduce the procedural requirement to a mere formality?”[18] Met deze laatste opmerking komen we bij een belangrijk aandachtspunt van de procedurele toetsing.
Meer concreet rijst dus de vraag of rechtbanken technisch gezien wel in staat zijn om de kwaliteit van het gevolgde besluitvormingsproces te beoordelen. Volgens Popelier zou dit wel meevallen: “Several strategies help courts to deal with this limited methodological capacity. Firstly, if restricted to the requirement of minimum guarantees for evidence-based decision-making, process review does not intrude upon the legislator’s procedural autonomy by imposing the duty to follow a well-defined optimal procedure. In this case, procedural errors play a role in particular when the court is deferential as to the substantive merits of the case. […] [T]hey should not be determining to assess a measure as unlawful, irrespective of the outcome of the decision. Further, courts are interested in the existence of procedural safeguards and generally do not engage in methodological disputes. For example, the ECtHR deems legislative interference with human rights justified when based upon consultations or studies, but does not require the use of a specific tool or method. Also, the Court is reluctant to discuss the quality of consultations or investigations, except in the case of a manifest error. In general, courts are expected to set ‘a minimum threshold of scientific consultation’ while respecting political discretion. Exceeding this minimum threshold and discussing the precise methods and figures used by the legislator, courts expose themselves to critical comments.”[19] De rechtbanken kunnen met andere woorden wat aan de oppervlakte blijven door zich enkel te richten op de kwaliteit van het besluitvormingsproces en niet op dat van de wetgeving zelf.
Daarnaast beschikken de rechters nog over enkele andere hulpmiddelen: “Secondly, courts may use the information produced in the course of the decision-making process. […] It appears that fact finding through regulatory tools such as consultations and impact assessments may help the Court to assess the rationality of the trade-off between national or subnational autonomy and economic efficiency. […] Thirdly, courts may rely on the opinions advanced by parties and procured by authoritative experts identified within or established by the regulatory environment, complying with standards laid down in regulatory guidelines such as the EU guidelines on expert advice, or subjected to peer review. They may require that the legislator consulted these experts and may require particular justification for deviations from this advice. Finally, courts may delegate the assessment of scientific evidence to experts or expert review groups. For example, WTO panels, when dealing with the judicial review of science-based measures, consult external experts to weigh the evidence advanced by parties.”[20] Het komt er dus op neer de wetgever het nodige werk te laten doen, en bij een rechterlijke toetsing het bewijs te vragen of dit werk grondig genoeg gebeurd is. Via de procedurele toetsingsmethode kunnen rechters m.a.w. de geleverde voorbereiding van de wetgeving eventueel tegen de wetgever gebruiken.
II.2. De semi-procedurele variant
N.a.v. het spanningsveld tussen de procesgerichte en inhoudelijke wijzen van rechterlijke toetsing van wetgeving heeft de hierboven al aangehaalde Bar-Siman-Tov een eigen variant van procedurele toetsing ontwikkeld: “’Semi-procedural review’ (SPR) is a model of judicial review which merges the examination of the statute’s enactment process with the substantive judicial determination of the statute’s constitutionality. Typically, SPR is divided into two stages. At the first stage, courts engage in substantive judicial review: they examine the content of a certain statute and determine whether it infringes upon constitutionally protected rights or other constitutional values. At the second stage, courts do an examination of the legislative process in order to determine the permissibility of the infringement.”[21]
Er bestaan twee vormen van semi-procedurele rechterlijke toetsing: “The classic and simple version of SPR is when courts enforce constitutional provisions that entrench certain rights or values through procedural entrenchment. By stipulating that certain rights or values can only be infringed by some supermajority or special legislative process, such provisions invite SPR. In enforcing such provisions, courts must first determine whether the content of the legislation in question infringes upon the entrenched right. If the answer is affirmative, courts proceed to review the legislative records to determine whether the required supermajority or special process for such an infringement were present during the enactment of the bill.”[22] Belangrijk hierbij is dat er wel degelijk een expliciete (grond-)wettelijke grondslag (i.c. de verplichting om een bepaalde procedure te volgen) voor de procedurele toetsing bestaat.
De auteur verschaft ons twee voorbeelden van een dergelijke toetsing, één uit Zuid-Afrika en één uit Israël, want zo merkt hij op: “In both of these examples courts exercised judicial review of the legislative process. In both cases, moreover, the question of whether the legislature met certain procedural requirements in the enactment process was the decisive factor determining the permissibility of the infringement. However, the judicial scrutiny of the legislative process came only after the courts exercised substantive judicial review and found a substantive constitutional infringement. It is this combination of substantive constitutional adjudication (in which courts determine whether the content of the law infringes upon substantive constitutional provisions guaranteeing rights or values) with procedural review (in which courts determine whether the law was enacted in conformity with the procedure required in the constitutional provisions entrenching these rights or values) that make them semi-procedural.”[23] Merk hierbij ook de volgorde op: eerst inhoudelijk, dan pas procedureel.
De tweede variant beschikt daarentegen niet over deze expliciete grondslag, maar is meer op spontane en impliciete wijze door rechtbanken tot stand gekomen: “A more complex and interesting emerging version of SPR is in cases where there is no constitutional provision requiring a special legislative process for the infringement of certain rights or values. In these cases, courts themselves develop judicial doctrines that integrate an examination of the legislature’s decision-making process into the judicial tests for determining the permissibility of constitutional infringements. Moreover, courts themselves create certain heightened procedural requirements when particular rights or values are infringed. Judicial review of the legislative process in these cases does not completely supplant the traditional balancing tests that courts use to determine the permissibility of infringements. Rather, the procedural review typically supplements the traditional balancing tests and is integrated into them. In the emerging version of SPR exercised by the ECtHR, the ECJ, and several national constitutional courts in Europe, the judicial examination of the legislative process is often integrated into the courts’ proportionality analysis. Hence, in a number of recent cases, these courts seemed to base their conclusion about proportionality, at least in part, on the question of whether the infringing act was enacted through a process that included procedural requirements such as consultation procedures, appropriate investigations and studies, and sufficient parliamentary debate.”[24] De evenredigheidstoets vormt dus de grondslag voor de kwaliteitstoets van de gevolgde besluitvorming.
Ten einde de semi-procedurele toetsing nog beter te verduidelijken is het interessant hier het verschil met een zuivere inhoudelijke toetsing uit te leggen: “Under the classic or ‘pure’ model of substantive judicial review, courts determine the constitutionality of legislation based strictly on an examination of the statute’s content (or substance). Typically, courts examine whether the content of a certain statute impermissibly infringes upon constitutionally protected rights or values. In making that determination, the process in which the legislature enacted the law is considered irrelevant (even in legal systems in which the determination of infringement is separated from the determination of its permissibility). Only the end product of the legislative process – the content of the enacted law – is the subject of judicial review. In contrast, under SPR, the question of whether the legislature met certain procedural requirements in the legislative process becomes relevant, and sometimes decisive, in the judicial determination of the statute’s substantive constitutionality. The key difference between purely substantive judicial review and SPR is at the stage of determining the permissibility of infringements. Under the purely substantive model, this determination is based entirely on the judgment of judges on whether substantive balancing tests (such as the legitimacy of the pursued objective; the fit between the measure and that objective; and the over-all cost-benefit of the infringing measure) were satisfied on the merits. SPR complements, or even partially substitutes, these substantive judicial judgments with a procedural examination of whether the legislature devoted considered judgment to these questions. It therefore represents a significant departure from the view that constitutionality should be determined purely on the statute’s content and which sees the enactment process as completely beyond the reach of courts. Moreover, it represents a partial, but dramatic, shift in the role of courts: from serving as society’s ultimate balancers of rights and interests to ensuring that the legislature takes responsibility for this task.”[25] Op een zekere wijze kan men ook stellen dat de rechter niet langer op een directe, maar nu op een indirecte wijze, dus via het afdwinging van een zorgvuldig handelen vanwege de wetgever, de naleving van de individuele grondrechten waarborgt.
Daartegenover bestaat er ook een belangrijk onderscheid met de zuivere procedurele toetsing: “Under ‘pure procedural judicial review’ (or ‘judicial review of the legislative process’ in its pure version), courts focus exclusively on an examination of the procedure leading to statutes’ enactment. The question of whether the legislature met certain procedural requirements in the legislative process is the sole consideration in determining the validity of legislation. The content of the legislation is deemed completely irrelevant. Judicial review of the legislative process is exercised uniformly on all legislation that was improperly enacted, regardless of the constitutionality of its content, and improper enactment is considered as sufficient grounds for invalidating an otherwise constitutional statute.
There are three key differences between the pure procedural and the semi-procedural models. One difference relates to the methodology of judicial review: the pure model represents the view that the procedural validity of legislation should be examined separately and independently of its substantive validity, whereas SPR merges the two examinations. The second difference regards the justification of judicial review of the legislative process. The purely procedural model represents the view that guaranteeing the integrity of the legislative process is justified in itself, regardless and independently of the need to protect individual rights or substantive values. Under SPR, in contrast, procedural review is only justified when individual rights or other constitutional values are at stake.
The third difference between the pure procedural and the semi-procedural models relates to the type of procedural requirements courts enforce under each model. Typically, most courts that exercise pure procedural review enforce only procedural requirements found in the formal rules governing the legislative process (with most enforcing only lawmaking requirements that are constitutionally mandated, while others also enforce statutory and parliamentary rules). Under the emerging semi-procedural model, in contrast, courts typically enforce judicially-created procedural requirements that go beyond the formal rules, including findings, consultation, and proper debate and deliberation. Hence, while the purely procedural model typically holds the legislature to a level of requirements that can be described as ‘procedural regularity’, the semi-procedural model typically subjects the legislature to the much higher standard that can be described as ‘procedural rationality’. This difference is not a necessary implication of the nature or definition of these models, but rather, a description of how they evolved in judicial practice.”[26] De zuivere procedurele toetsing is dus louter vormelijk of formeel van aard, de semi-procedureel bevat vooral inhoudelijke overwegingen.
Bij nader inzien blijkt de ‘zuivere’ procedurele toetsing trouwens niet zo populair bij rechters te zijn: “The last difference may be indicative of a larger phenomenon. Although care should be exercised in making generalizations, it appears that courts both in Europe and the U.S. indicate a clear preference of the semi-procedural model over the purely procedural model. Indeed, in some countries courts completely refuse to exercise pure-procedural review, even when constitutional law-making requirements are violated. Moreover, even among courts that do exercise pure-procedural review, most limit the scope of procedural requirements they enforce, and display a general tendency to refrain as much as possible from exercising pure-procedural review and striking down a law due to procedural defects in its enactment. In contrast […], courts demonstrate a growing propensity to exercise SPR and to enforce more demanding procedural requirements under this model, even in legal systems in which courts persistently refuse to exercise pure-procedural review.”[27] De vraag rijst hierbij of de SPR kan voort gevloeid zijn uit de zuivere procedurele toetsing, dan wel een eigen rechtsbron of ontstaansgeschiedenis heeft.
Het eigenlijk ontstaan van SPR kan gegrondvest zijn op het normatieve (‘zou moeten’) aspect of de inherente voordelen van SPR: “The normative appeal of SPR can be explained by examining how this model corresponds with the theoretical justifications of pure substantive judicial review and pure procedural judicial review. By merging procedural and substantive judicial review, SPR benefits from some of the main justifications of both substantive judicial review and procedural judicial review, while also avoiding some of the objections to each of the pure models.
The semi-procedural model’s appeal stems, first and foremost, from the fact that it is seen primarily as a tool for protecting fundamental rights. Indeed, notwithstanding the plethora of theoretical scholarship dedicated to justifying judicial review, the protection of individual and minority rights has long been the most dominant justification. Hence, SPR shares with substantive judicial review its most influential justification.
The semi-procedural model’s attractiveness also stems, to a large extent, from the fact that it is seen as more deferential to the substantive judgment of the legislature than pure substantive judicial review. The primary objection to substantive judicial review is that it allows unelected and unaccountable judges to displace the substantive choices of the democratically elected and accountable legislature. The semi-procedural model, in contrast, is seen leaving the substantive choices about rights and interests to the legislature, focusing instead on whether the legislature gave due consideration to these issues. […] Hence, the semi-procedural model is seen as a means of protecting rights and constitutional values, while avoiding, or at least ameliorating, one of the primary objections to substantive judicial review.”[28]
Of zoals de Amerikaanse rechtsgeleerde Tushnet het verwoordt: “Reconciling substantive constitutional review with normative democratic theory has proved enormously difficult […]. [Semi-procedural] doctrines, however, need not be inconsistent with normative democratic theory if they do not foreclose any substantive legislative choice. They clearly do not do so in theory, for their entire point is to ensure full consideration of constitutional norms by the political branches without dictating the content of those branches’ conclusions.”[29] In essentie vormt dit het ‘better placed’ argument dat we hierboven al behandeld hebben.
Bar-Siman-Tov ziet nog andere voordelen in de SPR: “A related feature that contributes to the semi-procedural model’s attractiveness is its provisional character. Under the classic model of (strong-form) substantive judicial review, the court’s constitutional judgments that invalidate a law are considered ‘final and unrevisable’. In contrast, by invalidating a law on procedural grounds, SPR signals to the legislature that it may re-enact the same invalidated law, as long as it follows a proper legislative process. This feature of giving the last word to the legislature enables SPR to evade another primary objection to substantive judicial review. The combination of the features […] gives SPR a ‘dialogic quality’. By allowing legislative response to judicial invalidations and leaving room for substantive legislative choice, it is seen as a model that enables an inter-branch dialogue between courts and legislatures; and by encouraging legislatures to pay closer attention to fundamental rights and other constitutional values and to follow a more deliberative legislative process, it is seen as promoting dialogue and deliberation about constitutional rights and values outside the courts. Hence, SPR also draws its legitimacy from dialogue theories, which are becoming increasingly influential in constitutional theory.”[30] Deze gedachtegang sluit aan bij de nieuwe invulling van de democratie als ‘consultatie en transparantie’ die hierboven al werd beschreven.
Er is tot slot ook een ‘economische’ of efficiëntiekant aan de zaak: “At the same time, SPR also shares one of the main justifications of pure procedural judicial review: the need to protect procedural democratic principles such as participation, transparency, accountability, and deliberation. In fact, because it sets the higher procedural bar of ‘procedural rationality’, it goes further than pure procedural review in advancing a robust version of deliberative democracy. By employing procedural review as a means for protecting fundamental rights, SPR not only builds upon the primary justification for substantive judicial review, it also avoids one of the primary objections to pure procedural review. Indeed, one of the main sources of resistance to pure procedural review is that it is not aimed at the protection of individual rights. The argument is that since the principal justification for judicial review is the need to protect fundamental rights, and since courts have limited resources and legitimacy capital, they should avoid wasting their precious resources in judicial review models that are not dedicated to vindicating these rights. SPR turns this objection into a justification.”[31]
Samengevat, “SPR appears as the best of both worlds: one model of judicial review that can achieve the main aims of both substantive and procedural models, while promoting dialogue, respecting legislative choice, and blunting the main arguments against the two pure models. And yet, while some scholars do see SPR as a ‘golden mean’, the emergence of this model has also sprung ‘a cottage industry of criticism […] in the academic community”. So why is SPR so controversial?”[32] Dit is een vraag die we pas in hoofdstuk vier onderzoeken.
III. Een illustratie: de procedurele toetsing en het EU-recht
In dit derde hoofdstuk gaan we – bij wijze van illustratie van wat procedurele toetsing inhoudt – wat dieper in op de draagwijdte van de (semi-)procedurele toetsing binnen het EU-recht en vervolgens binnen de rechtspraak van het Europees Hof van Justitie meer in het bijzonder.
III.1. De warrige democratische besluitvorming binnen de Europese Unie
Bij nader inzien blijkt de democratische besluitvorming binnen de EU gekenmerkt door een eigensoortig karakter dat sterk afwijkt van het klassieke model van nationale lidstaten: “The European multilevel construction compels constitutionalists to rethink concepts of democracy, sovereignty and legitimacy. European legislation does not derive legitimacy from being enacted by a sovereign body representing some demos. This is one of the reasons why the European Union does not fit in the traditional parliamentary model. Instead a new institutional balance must be created involving various kinds of bodies at various levels of government. When joining the European Union even unitary states are forced to leave the dogma of sovereignty behind and to define themselves from the idea of legal pluralism. Multilevel government needs a concept of democracy able to legitimize national, subnational and global decision making which affects other levels in a direct or indirect way.”[33]
Vooral het meerlagig karakter van het Europees bestuursmodel en de afwezigheid van een Europees ‘volk’ speelt het soevereiniteitsconcept parten: “The concept of ‘governance’ as a new way to seek legitimacy is interesting especially for the European Union which is defined by multi-level aspects and a lack of demos. The European Commission has clarified this in its White Paper on European Governance. […] [T]he Commission-centred strategy behind the governance paper is also reflected in the tools included in the Better Regulation programme. Nevertheless, the White Paper builds the foundations of a Better Regulation programme justified by arguments of legitimacy. It links legitimacy with the idea of both ‘involvement and participation’ and ‘efficiency and effectiveness’. […] Core elements of the governance strategy explained in the White Paper are threefold: 1) the rationality of policy and lawmaking (‘output legitimacy’), 2) the involvement of civil society (‘input legitimacy’) and 3) inter-level balance of interests. Thus the European Commission’s search for legitimacy implies more than effective lawmaking and direct involvement of non-state actors. The White Paper recognizes non-state actors and the public at large as influential to policy and decision making. […] In doing so, the White Paper accepts the governance ‘network’ approach: effective government action presupposes the recognition of mutual connection and dependency of both state and non-state actors at various levels. It recognizes the multilevel government nature of the EU as a permanent field of tension between integration and differentiation. Key principles to this effect are participation of national and subnational levels, subsidiarity and loyalty.”[34] Een soevereine besluitvorming van en binnen een parlement kan hier dan ook weinig soelaas brengen.
Deze visie vergt daarentegen een eigensoortig beleidsaanpak én nieuwe beleidsinstrumenten: “This strategy relies on both an institutional design and new instruments. The institutional design is about the representation and involvement of national and subnational levels in the European decision making bodies, about the division of tasks and responsibilities of the European Union, the Member States and the regional authorities, and about the role of the courts. The instruments need to implement key principles – in the White Paper defined in terms of openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness, proportionality and subsidiarity – in developing and implementing EU policy and lawmaking in a context of multi-level government. This is where the Better Regulation programme comes in. Regulatory programmes should result in decisions the quality of which is not derived from the representative nature of the lawmaking body, but is inherent to the decision at such and to the decision making process as they answer to substantive requirements. In other words: legitimate decisions are transparent, effective, supported by the public and proportional, they can be justified on the basis of rational data and motives, and they are in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. Regulatory programmes should provide for the tools, instruments and procedures to make this happen. Although the EU better Regulation programme is selective in the promotion of regulatory tools […], the tools put forward in the programme clearly aim to make operational both input and output legitimacy.”[35] Of hoe een initieel economisch getint beleid uiteindelijk ook het bestuursmodel van de EU zelf schraagt.
Welke rol zou de rechterlijke toetsing hierin moeten spelen? Popelier geeft een antwoord: “As in the context of multilevel governance there is no single sovereign parliament claiming to represent the interests of ‘the’ people and the concept of democracy shifts from a purely countermajoritarian model to a concept of deliberative democracy and governance, the courts should take up a role of regulatory watchdog. The balance of national, subnational, supranational and private interests being of a political nature, it is not for the court to substitute its own weighing. However, in order to secure the position of all entities involved in the network decision making it is necessary that a watchdog sees to the respect of the institutional and procedural safeguards. If necessary, it should articulate procedural requirements in order to safeguard democratic legitimacy in terms of balance of interests, reason giving and accountability. The European Court’s response until now, has been equivocal.”[36] Hieronder zal echter blijken dat deze tweeslachtigheid steeds meer afneemt.
Popelier formuleert op basis hiervan een belangrijke aanbeveling voor de Europese rechters: “If the European Courts are to take up this role of regulatory watchdog the question inevitably rises whether obstacles for individuals to challenge EU regulation should be softened. […] At present the Court displays some willingness to provide for a ‘participation exception’, if procedural guarantees confer a right to participate in the political process. […] The argument should be taken seriously that with regard to highly specialized regulation such challenges would be brought exclusively by those with sufficient resources and high interests at stake, using scientific material selectively in an attempt to convince the Court to overturn regulation which is ‘damaging to the own narrow interests’. On the other hand, any tool, whether institutionalized in the decision making process or in judicial procedure, is apt to be used by the well-organized and major concerns rather than by more vulnerable individuals. While it is true that the ‘primary concern must be that the capacity of concerned citizens and experts […] to get their voices heard within the Community’s regulatory process’, it is in the last instance the Court’s role to compel the Commission to fulfil this concern.”[37] Het Hof als waakhond van transparantie en consultatie.
III.2. Het Europees Hof van Justitie en de procesgerichte toetsing
De volgende vraag die rijst is of en in welke mate het Europees Hof van Justitie gebruik maakt van deze procesgerichte toetsing van Europese of nationale wetgeving. Volgens Koen Lenaerts zou dit wel degelijk het geval zijn: “Without claiming that structuralism should be embraced by the ECJ as the leading theory of judicial review, the purpose of my contribution is to explore how recent case-law reveals that the ECJ has also striven to develop guiding principles which aim to improve the way in which the political institutions of the EU adopt their decisions. In those cases, the ECJ decided not to second-guess the appropriateness of the policy choices made by the EU legislator. Instead, it preferred to examine whether, in reaching an outcome, the EU political institutions had followed the procedural steps mandated by the authors of the Treaties. Stated simply, I argue that judicial deference in relation to ‘substantive outcomes’ has been counterbalanced by a strict ‘process review’. To that effect, I would like to discuss three recent rulings of the ECJ, delivered after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, where an EU policy measure was challenged indirectly, i.e. via the preliminary reference procedure, namely Vodafone, Volker und Markus Schecke and Test-Achats. Whilst in the former case the ECJ rules that the questions raised by the referring court disclosed no factor of such a kind as to affect the validity of the challenged act, in the latter cases the challenged provisions of an EU act were declared invalid.”[38] Laten we deze drie baanbrekende arresten overlopen.
Volgens Lenaerts vormt Vodafone een interessant voorbeeld dat aantoont hoe het Hof de evenredigheidstoets op een procedurele wijze toepast: “Instead of second-guessing the merits of the substantive choices made by the EU legislator, the ECJ preferred to make sure that lawmakers had done their work properly: the EU legislator had to show before the ECJ that it had taken into consideration all the relevant interests at stake. In so doing, the ECJ stressed the importance of the preparatory study carried out by the Commission, in which the latter institution showed that it had examined different regulatory options and assessed their economic, social and environmental impact, before deciding to impose a price ceiling in the retail roaming market. In the Commission’s own words, the impact assessment is ‘the process of systematic analysis of the likely impacts of intervention by public authorities. It is as such an integral part of the process of designing policy proposals and making decision-makers and the public aware of the likely impacts’. Indeed, in its judgment, the ECJ referred to the findings set out in the IAR on six occasions and to those laid down in the explanatory memorandum on five. As Brenncke notes, it seems that ‘[the] more the [ECJ] requires from the Commission in procedural terms, […] the more it will alleviate the marginal judicial review of the substantive issues which a “manifestly inappropriate” standard entails’.”[39] Merk hierbij wel op dat het Hof de inhoudelijke kwaliteit van het ‘Impact Assessment Report’ (IAR) heeft bekeken ten einde te kunnen beslissen dat wel degelijk alternatieven werden overwogen en er gekeken is naar hun economische, sociale en leefmilieu-aspecten.
Koen Lenaerts ziet dit gebruik van de IAR bovendien als een positieve ontwikkeling: “The application of ‘procedural proportionality’ in Vodafone is, in my view, a positive development in the case-law of the ECJ on the sensitive issue of the vertical allocation of powers. It is worth noting that it is the first time ever that the ECJ has expressly relied on the IAR when examining the compatibility of an EU policy measure with the principle of proportionality. In order to determine whether the challenged act is ultra vires or intra vires, the ECJ should not limit its scrutiny to a formal reading of the preamble thereof, but it should undertake a close examination of the explanatory memorandum and, notably, of the IAR. I concur with Craig in that the elaboration of an IAR does not exempt the ECJ from checking whether the conditions for having recourse to Article 114 TFEU, as a legal basis, have been met. However, he correctly posits that the IAR does provide a helpful framework within which to address ‘competence creep’ or ‘competence anxiety’ concerns. In his view, ‘if the justificatory reasoning to this effect in the [IAR] is wanting, then the ECJ should invalidate the relevant instrument, and thereby signal to the political institutions that the precepts in the Treaty are to be taken seriously’.”[40] Volgens Lenaerts moet de procedurele toetsing wel degelijk tanden hebben en dus de grondslag voor de vernietiging van de beleidsmaatregel kunnen vormen.
Vodafone is volgens Lenaerts trouwens niet het eerste arrest waar deze vorm van toetsing gebruikt werd: “This is precisely what the ECJ had previously done in Spain v Council. In that case, Spain challenged the validity of the new Community support system for cotton adopted by Regulation No 1782/2003 on the ground that that system would produce effects that ran directly counter to the avowed aims of supporting cotton production and ensuring that cotton was not driven out by other crops in those regions where cotton was important for the agricultural economy. In particular, Spain argued that Regulation No 1782/2003 was in breach of the principle of proportionality, given that, by fixing the amount of the specific aid for cotton at 35% of the total existing aid under the previous scheme, the Commission had not taken into account labour costs and thus, the new scheme was unable to guarantee the profitability of cotton producers. The ECJ sided with Spain. After acknowledging that the EU legislator enjoys broad discretion when adopting acts pertaining to the Common Agricultural Policy (the ‘CAP’), the ECJ held that such discretion does not exempt the EU institutions which have adopted the act in question from ‘show[ing] before the [ECJ] that in adopting the act they actually [took] into consideration all the relevant factors and circumstances of the situation the act was intended to regulate’. Accordingly, ‘the institutions must at the very least be able to produce and set out clearly and unequivocally the basic facts which had to be taken into account as the basis of the contested measures of the act and on which the exercise of their discretion depended’. Hence, since neither the Council nor the Commission had provided sufficient factual input to back-up their decision to fix the amount of the specific aid for cotton at 35%, the ECJ had no choice but to annul the contested Regulation.”[41] Merk hierbij op dat Lenaerts het hier vooral heeft over een gebrek aan vereiste bewijsvoering.
Daar waar de Europese Commissie zijn besluitvorming rationeel moet grondvesten op de IA-methodiek, geldt dit niet voor de andere twee pijlers van de Europese wetgevende macht, maar dit neemt hun verantwoordelijkheid ten aanzien van een zorgvuldige besluitvorming niet weg: “Moreover, judicial reliance on the IAR is not always possible. For example, it is difficult to take into consideration the IAR where the Council and the European Parliament have made amendments to the Commission’s proposal. The fact that the Council and the European Parliament departed from the IAR does not mean, however, that the contested measure is contrary to the principle of proportionality. Otherwise, if the Council and the European Parliament were bound by the IAR, the principle of institutional balance would be called into question. Yet, Alemanno notes that, in such a case, the Council and the European Parliament are compelled, by virtue of the 2003 IIA [Inter-Institutional Agreement] on Better Law Making, to carry out their own IAR on the proposed amendments to the Commission’s proposal. In Afton Chemical, the ECJ took a more limited approach: it just required those amendments to be based on scientific data, but it did not require an IAR. In summary, Vodafone shows how ex ante legislative assessment and ex post judicial review may contribute to a more rational law-making. Most importantly, Vodafone demonstrates that, by basing its reasoning on the IAR, the ECJ gives important incentives to the EU legislator to investigate alternative mechanisms and policies seriously.”[42] Ook belangrijk te onthouden is de nadruk van het Hof op de noodzakelijkheidsvereiste: zijn er andere, minder belastende maatregelen mogelijk en waarom zijn die niet weerhouden?
In het tweede arrest staat niet de onderlinge verhouding tussen de EU en de lidstaten centraal, maar wel de bescherming van individuele grondrechten tegenover een ‘oprukkende’ overheid: “Volker und Markus Schecke is another interesting case where the ECJ decided to carry out a ‘process review’ of the contested EU measure. Just as in Vodafone, the ECJ also applied the principle of proportionality in a procedural fashion. However, in contrast to Vodafone, the principle of proportionality did not operate as a constitutional tool designed to protect the Member States from an EU ‘competence creep’. In Volker und Markus Schecke, the principle of proportionality was relied upon in order to protect individual liberty against arbitrary encroachments by public authorities. Volker und Markus Schecke was decided after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. Consequently, the ECJ had recourse to the Charter not only as an aid to interpretation, but as primary EU law. Hence, the principle of proportionality was applied as defined by Article 52 of the Charter, which states that ‘[s]ubject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others’.”[43] Hiermee zijn we wat dichter bij het thema van deze studie gekomen.
Centraal in de bescherming van de grondrechten staat artikel 52 (1) van het EU-Charter dat bepaalt dat elke inperking van deze rechten moet voldoen aan het evenredigheidsbeginsel: “It is thus for the EU institutions and, as the case may be, for the national authorities participating in the implementation of EU law, to verify that any limitation on fundamental rights is suitable to meet the ‘objectives of general interest recognised by the Union’ and ‘the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others’; and that it does not go beyond what is necessary for achieving the legitimate aim pursued. In Volker und Markus Schecke, the ECJ found that the publication on a website of the names of the beneficiaries of aid from the EAGF and the EAFRD and of the amounts which they receive from those Funds was liable to increase transparency with respect to the use of the agricultural aid concerned. The ECJ reasoned that such display of information reinforced public control of the use to which that money is put and contributes to the best use of public funds. However, regarding the necessity of the publication in question, the ECJ held that it went beyond what was necessary for achieving the legitimate aims pursued, given that neither the Council nor the Commission had ‘sought to strike [the right] balance between the European Union’s interest in guaranteeing the transparency of its acts and ensuring the best use of public funds, on the one hand, and the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, on the other’. Indeed, derogations and limitations in relation to the protection of personal data must apply only in so far as they are strictly necessary. Thus, the Council and the Commission should have examined whether the legitimate objective pursued by the contested regulations could not be achieved by measures which interfere less with the right of the beneficiaries concerned to respect for their private life in general and the protection of their personal data in particular. Accordingly, the ECJ ruled that Article 44a of Regulation No 1290/2005 and Regulation No 259/2008 were invalid.”[44] De voorgenomen beleidsmaatregel was voor het Hof dus niet noodzakelijk aangezien alternatieven niet aantoonbaar onderzocht waren, aangezien de EU-wetgever hieromtrent geen bewijs kon voorleggen en dus uiteindelijk het juridische beginsel van de afdoende motiveringsplicht schond.
Uit dit arrest kunnen we volgens Lenaerts drie belangrijke besluiten trekken: “First, by declaring invalid Article 44a of Regulation No 1290/2005 and Regulation No 259/2008, the ECJ showed, once again, that it takes the protection of fundamental rights seriously. Second, Volker und Markus Schecke also seems to confirm that, in the realm of fundamental rights protection, the standard of review applied by the ECJ is always the same, and does not vary depending on whether the contested measure has been adopted by the EU or by the Member States when they implement EU law. Indeed, the requirements for a limitation on a fundamental right to be compatible with the Charter, laid down in Article 52 thereof, do not distinguish between the EU or the national origin of that limitation. Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of our discussion, in Volker und Markus Schecke, the ECJ found that, as opposed to the measure in question in Vodafone, neither the Council nor the Commission had done their preparatory work properly. The contested Regulations were deemed incompatible with the principle of proportionality because those two institutions had failed to examine whether there were alternatives which, whilst attaining the objectives pursued, interfered less with the fundamental rights of the beneficiaries concerned. For example, the Council and the Commission should have examined whether limiting the publication of data by name relating to the beneficiaries of the EAGF and the EAFRD to the periods for which they received aid, or the frequency or nature and amount of aid received, was enough. It is true that the ECJ seems to suggest that such a limited publication ‘would protect some of the beneficiaries concerned from interference with their private lives, [whilst providing] citizens with a sufficiently accurate image of the aid granted by the EAGF and the EAFRD to achieve the objectives of that legislation’. However, the findings of ECJ are not conclusive in this respect. It was left for the Council and the Commission, when adopting a new Regulation, to determine whether such limited publication could actually guarantee the objectives they pursue.”[45] De Europese wetgever moet dus op een voldoende zorgvuldige wijze zijn huiswerk maken en zo aantonen dat de grondrechten op een geoorloofde manier zijn ‘aangetast’.
Hiermee zijn we aanbeland bij de bespreking van het derde mijlpaalarrest: “In Vodafone and in Volker und Markus Schecke, the principle of proportionality was applied internally. The question whether the purposes invoked by the EU legislator were genuine did not arise. For example, in Volker und Markus Schecke, no one called into question whether the EU legislator was really seeking to enhance transparency with respect to the use of the agricultural aid concerned and to reinforce public control of the use of that money. By contrast, in Test-Achats, the ECJ was confronted with that very question. A close reading of that case reveals that the contested EU provision was declared invalid because there was a contradiction between that provision and the objectives pursued by the EU act of which it formed part. The contested EU provision did not comply with the external aspects of the principle of proportionality, i.e. it was not consistent. It follows from the foregoing that, just as when testing the compatibility of a national measure with EU law, the ECJ also verifies whether there are internal inconsistencies as between secondary EU law and hierarchically superior rules of EU law. The ruling of the ECJ suggests that it focuses on the contextual aspects of the proportionality principle, i.e. on the consistency of the EU measure in question. In other words, the principle of proportionality is not applied in an abstract fashion, ‘but as a part of the legal and factual context in which the [contested] measure operates’.”[46] Opnieuw voldeed de Europese wetgever niet aan de vereisten van een afdoende bewijsvoering: de beleidsmaatregel moet daadwerkelijk, dus naar de feiten, geschikt zijn om het legitieme beleidsdoel te realiseren.
Dit brengt Lenaerts dan ook tot de volgende conclusies en daarbij horende beleidsadviezen: “Vodafone, Volker und Markus Schecke and Test-Achats are three recent judgments which were delivered after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. To some extent, these judgments reveal that, when examining the validity of EU policy measures, the ECJ is not reluctant to follow an approach that focuses on improving the decision-making process of the EU institutions, rather than on second-guessing their substantive findings. As Vodafone shows, ‘process review’ is an interesting way of making sure that, in areas where the EU legislator enjoys broad discretion, the latter does not commit abuses. ‘Process review’ increases judicial scrutiny over the decision-making process of the EU institutions. However, it prevents the ECJ from intruding into the realm of politics. Moreover, by inviting the political institutions of the EU to enhance the rationalization of their decision-making process, the ECJ enforces the structure put in place by the authors of the Treaties. Whilst ‘process review’ shows due deference to the expertise and higher institutional capacities of policy makers, it may be the only way of judicially enforcing principles that have a clear political nature, such as the principle of subsidiarity.
Moreover, ‘process review’ should always precede substantive judicial review in order to allow the ECJ to make use of its ‘passive virtues’ by avoiding unnecessary substantive conflicts with the EU political institutions. In my view, the ECJ is more respectful of the prerogatives of the political institutions of the EU if it rules that, when adopting the contested act, those institutions failed to take into consideration all the relevant interests at stake, than if it questions their policy choices by reference to its own view of the issues involved. This is precisely what the ECJ did in Volker und Markus Schecke. Last but not least, Test-Achats stresses the importance of consistency. By looking at the contextual aspects of the principle of proportionality, not only is the ECJ enhancing the legitimacy of the EU legislator when the latter imposes limits on fundamental rights, but also its own judicial legitimacy. It shows that the ECJ is ready to declare invalid an EU provision which, in addition to derogating from a fundamental right, gives rise to contradictions with the EU act of which it forms part.” Belangrijk hier is dus dat het Hof niet enkel kijkt naar de vormelijke aspecten van het besluitvormingsproces, maar ook en vooral naar de inhoud of de kwaliteit ervan. In die zin doet het Hof aan een inhoudelijke toetsing van het totstandkomingsproces van wetgeving.
Wat de rechtheoretische onderbouwing van deze arresten betreft, blijft Lenaerts echter wat op de vlakte: “Unlike the U.S. academic debate over structuralism, the purpose of my contribution was not to prove the operability (or inoperability) of the ‘substance vs. process’ divide in the context of the EU legal order. Instead, I limited myself to showing the advantages of reviewing the different procedural steps taken by the EU political institutions when adopting an act of general application. In that regard, it seems to me that an increased judicial control of the decision-making process does not imply that judges should take a more pro-active stand whereby the latter replace the substantive choices made by the EU political institutions with their own. Nor should a process-oriented review be equated with judicial surrender. On the contrary, more often than not, courts can contribute to aligning political decisions with the structure set out in the Treaties if they provide incentives to improve the rationality of the decision-making process of policy makers.”[47] Een cruciale vraag hierbij blijft echter of deze versterking van de democratische structuur van de Europese Unie wel behoort tot de rechtsprekende bevoegdheden van het Hof, dan wel slechts moet beschouwd worden als een (positieve) bijkomstigheid bij de juridische plicht van het Hof tot bescherming van de grondrechten, zoals bepaald in het EU-Charter.
IV. De problematische kanten van de procedurele toetsing
In dit hoofdstuk gaan we, zoals beloofd, dieper in op de vraag waarom de (semi-) procedurele toetsing van wetgeving, ondanks de vele ogenschijnlijke voordelen, toch als problematisch bestempeld wordt. Eerst bekijken we de inherente gebreken van de semi-procedurele toetsing die Bar-Siman-Tov zelf vaststelt. Vervolgens overlopen we een kritisch commentaar van de Italiaanse rechtsgeleerde Alessandro Alemanno op de stellingen van Bar-Siman-Tov.
IV.1. De inherente pijnpunten van de semi-procedurele toetsing
Zelfs Bar-Siman-Tov heeft in zijn hierboven al uitgebreid besproken artikel een aantal bezwaren of tegenkantingen geformuleerd tegen zijn versie van de procesgerichte toetsing, de semi-procedurele toetsing. De eerste vorm van kritiek slaat net op het procedurele element van de SPR: “The main common feature of the semi and pure procedural models is that in both models, courts determine the validity of legislation, at least in part, by scrutinizing the enactment process and evaluating the adequacy of this process. By sharing this feature with the pure procedural model, SPR also shares its main source of criticism. Indeed, ‘the idea that courts will determine the validity of legislation based on the adequacy of lawmaking procedures is highly controversial’. Such judicial review elicits vigorous criticisms primarily because it ‘is often seen by its critics as an interference with the internal workings of the legislature and as an intrusion into the most holy-of-holies of the legislature’s prerogatives’. This argument is at the core of many of the objections to both procedural models, whether these objections are framed in terms of parliamentary sovereignty, parliamentary autonomy, separation of powers or the respect due to the co-equal legislature. Indeed, this argument is at the core of vociferous objections to SPR not only in the UK, but also in countries such as the U.S., which never espoused parliamentary sovereignty and have firmly-established substantive judicial review.”[48]
Volgens Bar-Siman-Tov zou dit bezwaar echter gemakkelijk te weerleggen zijn: “Supporters of procedural judicial review offer a variety of arguments in response to this prevalent objection to procedural review. The most common response refers to features common to both the semi and pure procedural models, namely their deference to the substantive judgments of legislatures and their provisional character. The argument is that a judicial review model that does not interfere with the substantive choices of legislatures and which also gives the final word to legislatures rather than courts should be viewed as more respectful and less intrusive towards legislatures than substantive judicial review. Supporters of SPR argue further that it is also more legitimate and less intrusive than the purely procedural model, because it only reviews the legislative process when substantive constitutional values are at stake, whereas the pure model polices the legislative process ‘in a free-form, across-the-board way’. This argument sounds reasonable, for it means that under the semi-procedural model courts engage in legislative process review in a more limited set of cases, and only when there is the added justification of protecting rights and substantive constitutional values.”[49] Vanuit democratisch oogpunt is een procedurele toetsing eigenlijk beter dan een inhoudelijke.
Maar zo merkt hij op: “One argues, however, perhaps counter-intuitively, that this difference between the semi and pure procedural models actual makes SPR less defensible. […][O]ne of the primary defenses of procedural review is the argument that it is more legitimate and respectful towards the legislature, because it focuses on the legislative process, while leaving substantive choices to the legislature. This argument is particularly applicable to the purely procedural model, for it focuses exclusively on the enactment process and completely avoids reviewing the content of the legislation. It therefore leaves the decision about the legislation’s content, with all the substantive policy and values choices it entails, entirely to the legislature.
The persuasiveness of this argument is more limited, however, when applied to SPR. In the semi-procedural model, the procedural review does not completely replace the court’s substantive review. [T]he first stage of this model, in which courts determine whether there is a constitutional infringement, is based entirely on traditional substantive review. To be sure, by making the adequacy of legislative procedures a relevant consideration in determining the permissibility of infringements (and particularly by treating this factor as a legitimate reason for concluding that the infringement is permissible), SPR does leave more room for respecting legislative choices than pure substantive review. However, in the emerging semi-procedural model, even the stage of determining the permissibility of infringement still has a dominant substantive aspect, because the procedural review typically complements rather than completely substitutes the traditional substantive balancing tests. Hence, much of society’s substantive choices on issues such as constitutional meaning, the proper balance between rights and interests, the legitimacy of certain objectives, and the permissibility of certain means are still made by courts rather than legislatures.
The semi-procedural model requires courts to make substantive judgments not only while employing this model, but also in deciding when to employ this model. The pure procedural model applies uniformly on all legislation that was improperly enacted, and imposes the same level of procedural requirements on the enactment of all laws, regardless of their subject matter of possible impact on certain constitutional rights or values. In contrast, in SPR, courts scrutinize the enactment process and impose heightened procedural requirements only in ‘cases in which the substantive values at stake are (in the Court’s view) distinctively deserving of judicial protection’. In fact, the semi-procedural model not only puts judges in the position of making substantive value judgments about which substantive values merit greater judicial protection; it also puts courts in a position of dictating to the legislature which substantive values merit greater legislative attention.
Thus, the semi procedural nature of the semi-procedural model inevitably means that it also has a strong substantive aspect. Consequently, this model is susceptible to the main criticisms levelled against substantive judicial review – including democratic legitimacy arguments and institutional competence arguments against courts making substantive constitutional, moral, value and policy judgments. While its procedural aspects allow SPR to blunt these criticisms, unlike the purely procedural model, it cannot completely avoid them.”[50] Het blijft dus het inhoudelijke aspect van de SPR dat veel weerstand opwekt, vooral wanneer dit onderdeel binnen de rechterlijke toetsing dominant blijft.
Uiteraard, “as critics of Ely’s efforts to develop a value-neutral procedural constitutional theory already observed, procedural approaches to judicial review also entail value judgments. Even the purely procedural model requires courts to decide which procedural requirements to enforce, and since legislative procedures embody underlying values, this decision inevitably involves value judgments. There is a crucial difference, however, because the purely procedural model requires courts to make value judgments about which procedural values merit protection, while SPR additionally requires them to make value judgments about which substantive values merit protection. This difference is important, because – as both theoretical work by democratic theorists and empirical work by social psychologists establish – there is significantly more theoretical and societal agreement about proper procedures than about substantive values.”[51] De handhaving van inhoudelijke rechten blijft de achillespees van de SPR zijn.
Een tweede bezwaar betreft de juridische grondslag van de SPR: “As we have seen, under the purely procedural model, courts typically enforce procedural lawmaking requirements found in constitutions (and sometimes also in statutes and parliamentary rules). Under the emerging semi-procedural model, in contrast, courts typically enforce more demanding ‘procedural-rationality’ requirements, created by the courts themselves. This difference has profound consequences for the defensibility and justifiability of SPR. […]
When courts enforce the less-demanding procedural requirements stipulated in the formal rules regulating lawmaking, they usually protect relatively uncontested procedural values, such as majority vote, political equality and the like, which could be accepted under almost any normative conception of democracy. In contrast, the more demanding procedural-rationality standard enforced under SPR protects procedural values whose acceptance largely depend on the acceptance of a particular, deliberative, notion of democracy. Moreover, when courts enforce constitutional and statutory procedural requirements, they can claim that the value judgment about the type of procedural values that merit protection was already made by the constitutional framers of the legislature, and that they are merely effectuating that judgment. In contrast, when courts enforce judicially-created procedural requirements, they make the value judgment about which procedural values merit protection themselves, hence inviting questions whether it is the legitimate role of courts to make these judgments.
Furthermore, the type of procedural requirements enforced impacts the force of the main criticism against procedural review – the argument that it illegitimately intrudes into the legislative sphere. This criticism is exacerbated when courts turn from enforcing lawmaking requirements mandated by the constitution or even by the legislature itself to imposing upon the legislature heightened judicially-created requirements. This sentiment was nicely captured in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Souter’s objection to SPR: ‘[judicial] authority to require Congress to act with some high degree of deliberateness […] would be as patently unconstitutional as an Act of Congress mandating long opinions from this Court’.”[52]
Ten derde rijst de vraag of de rechters wel in staat zijn een SPR uit te voeren, gelet op het moeilijk te onderbouwen inhoudelijk karakter ervan: “The type of procedural requirements enforced also impacts arguments about courts’ institutional competence to exercise procedural review. It is easier to defend judges’ ability to examine whether a law satisfied procedural requirements such as bicameral passage, three readings or a special majority than to defend their competence to evaluate the sufficiency of legislative findings or the adequacy of parliamentary debate and deliberation. In a similar manner, the degree of procedural demands enforced by courts also impacts the strength against procedural review relating to the ability of legislatures to realistically meet the procedural standards imposed by courts. The level of procedural demands imposed by courts also impacts the feasibility of reenactment of an invalidated law, and hence the strength of one of the main arguments in favor of procedural review: that judicial invalidations of statutes under procedural review are merely provisional. For example, a decision that remands the statute to the legislature and permits parliament to re-pass it as long as the three-reading requirement is observed imposes significantly less reenactment costs than a decision that requires evidence of a high degree of deliberation and fact-finding in the legislative process.”[53]
Tot slot dreigt de SPR afbreuk te doen aan één van de grote voordelen van procedurele toetsing, namelijk de mogelijkheid om in dialoog met de wetgever te treden: “The type of procedural requirements enforced has a more complex impact of the dialogue justification. On the one hand, by insisting on adequate participation, consultation, deliberation and debate when fundamental rights and other constitutional values are at stake, courts play a crucial role in ensuring and promoting political and societal dialogue about those issues. On the other hand, if courts impose too-demanding procedural requirements, they may create such high reenactment costs that would undermine the other crucial element of the dialogue justification: the ability of the legislature to respond to judicial invalidations of statutes. In a way, this tradeoff mirrors a tension between dialogue theorists about the essential element of the dialogue justification. For some dialogue theorists, the dialogue justification revolves entirely around the claim that judicial invalidations of statutes ‘usually leave room for, and usually receive, a legislative response’. For others, the essential component of the dialogue justification is the claim that the ‘Court acts as a catalyst for debate, fostering a national dialogue about constitutional meaning. Prompting, maintaining, and focusing this debate about constitutional meaning is the primary function of judicial review.’ Nevertheless, both camps will agree that the claim that courts do not have the final word and that a judicial decision invalidating a statute is merely an invitation for reconsideration by the political process, is an indispensable part of the dialogue justification. Hence, the dilemma about the level of procedural requirements courts should enforce is unavoidable.”[54] In het volgende en laatste hoofdstuk zullen we zien hoe Bar-Siman-Tov zal proberen een antwoord op deze bezwaren te bieden door de SPR verder te verfijnen.
IV.2. Nihil nove sub sole?
Meer fundamentele bezwaren tegen het pleidooi van Bar-Siman-Tov voor de erkenning van de SPR als een autonome rechterlijke toetsingswijze lezen we in de inzichten van Alemanno: “[T]he judicial practice that emerges from my own proposed reconstruction appears less the fruit of judicial fiat and more the inevitable result of a shift in policymaking towards the use of new tools to evaluate the merits of policies. It will indeed be demonstrated that the ‘cross-national phenomenon’ [of semi-procedural review – SPR] […] has more to do with how policymakers draft their proposals than with how judges choose to review them.”[55] En “Yet, unlike the ‘pure’ models of judicial review, be it procedural or substantive, SPR is not an autonomous model of judicial review that courts may deliberately choose. Rather, SPR remains inherently dependent on another, autonomous model of judicial review: substantive review. Therefore, SPR and pure procedural review cannot compete one with another and, what is more, they are – at least in principle – totally unrelated to one another. Indeed, […] while pure substantive review may transform into SPR, pure procedural review cannot.”[56]
Alemanno beschouwt de SPR simpelweg als een oplossing die rechtbanken ontwikkeld hebben wanneer zij geconfonteerd worden met een moeilijke inhoudelijke afweging van belangen: “This appears to be the essence of SPR as it emerges from virtually all other ‘representative examples’ […]: courts that engage in SPR do not deliberately embrace this new model of review but, called upon to exercise substantive review of a contested act, they supplement their [substantive] analysis with preferences to the process that led to the adoption of that act. In particular, courts refer to the evidence, investigations, parliamentary debate, and consultation input – often called ‘semi-substantive rules’ – that have led to the adoption of the contested act. As a result, under this emerging ‘judicial trend’, these procedural requirements typically act, regardless of their legal status, as proxies for the determination of constitutionality infringements.”[57]
Dit brengt Alemanno tot de centrale vraag waarom rechters zo handelen. “Why are they developing such a growing interest towards the procedural requirements of legislation? Why do they feel the need to examine the legislature’s decision-making process as part of their determination of the substantive constitutionality of legislation? In other words, why is SPR actually occurring?”[58] Hij verschaft ons zijn antwoord op basis van een boude stelling: “My claim is that the evolution of this trend towards a more rationality-oriented substantive judicial review is directly related, and largely reflects, the diffusion of evidence-based requirements imposed on policymakers across the world. These norms, regardless of their legal status, require policymakers to inter alia consult interested parties and experts, conduct studies and collect evidence as well as engage in deliberation processes. Together these requirements are often referred to as ‘principles of proper law making’ and may translate into more specific principles such as that of ‘good administration’, etc. Thus, for instance, procedural requirements, such as cost-benefit analysis, notice-and-comment, as well as regulatory impact assessment (IA), force policymakers to collect more evidence and engage with stakeholders.”[59]
Alemanno werkt zijn thesis verder uit: “As a result of the implementation of these regulatory reform instruments, the legislative process becomes more transparent, more assessable and open to external input. Moreover, due to the rationality-enhancement function played by most of these instruments, both the process and the outcome of the legislative-making process are expected to become more evidence-based. The ensuing ‘rationality turn’ of policymaking paves the way to an increased availability of ready-made materials that may enable not only interested parties but also courts to know more about the process leading to the adoption of a given act. Therefore, […] courts today, when called upon to establish the legality of an act, supplement their substantive scrutiny with references to some of the procedural requirements as these have progressively been incorporated into the policy process. Studies, consultation procedures, and parliamentary debates all provide a useful critical mass of materials orienting the court when making a determination about the legality of a given act. While not all these documents are the products of new procedural requirements, there has been – over the years – an increasing trend in anchoring policymaking to more evidence and deliberation. In the light of the above, it should therefore not come as a surprise that as a result of a ‘more rational decision-making process’ may follow a ‘more rational judicial review process’. That is what Koen Lenaerts recently defined within the EU context as ‘process review’.”[60]
Samengevat, “my previous analysis demonstrates that the judicial trend underlying SPR does not qualify, in the light of its current manifestations, as an autonomous model of judicial review. It suggests that the trend should rather be understood as a natural, and therefore largely inevitable, expansion of substantive review. […] Given the emphasis placed on the evidence underpinning the process of decision-making and its gradual incorporation into the existing judicial review models, it appears to be more appropriate to capture this new judicial trend under a less ambitious and nuanced categorization, what I refer to as the nascent ‘evidence-based judicial reflex’.” [61]
Cruciaal in Alemanno’s redenering is de nadruk die hij legt op het verzamelen van feitelijk bewijsmateriaal door de rechters om de objectiviteit of rationaliteit van het gevoerde afwegingsproces te kunnen beoordelen: “Indeed, as a matter of fact, what characterizes the emergence of this new trend of judicial review is not its procedural [be it full or semi-] component of the review. Rather, what is central to this new form of scrutiny is the instrumental use of the evidence gathered during the decision-making process in order to verify the adequacy and quality of that process. In other words, the common thread among most of the judgments […] appears to be a ‘hunt for objectivity’ in which the procedural component is instrumental to its final objective: a rationality check of the policy process.
Moreover, in the absence of an autonomous model of judicial review, the courts’ efforts at integrating evidence into their scrutiny appears more the result of an instinctive reflex that the product of deliberate endeavour. Indeed, by nature, a reflex action is an involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus. As previously demonstrated, the stimulus to this nascent impulse is clearly offered by the increasing evidence-based nature of the policy process. There is an interesting implication stemming from that. The reflexive nature of this judicial trend implies that courts will turn to the procedural materials accompanying the adoption of the contested act not only when this is available but also when it is missing. In other words, the evidence-based judicial reflex – due to its involuntary nature – may prompt courts, when scrutinizing the legality of a given act, to annul that act because the process leading to its adoption departed from some principles of proper law making’.”[62]
Alemanno vindt hiervoor bewijzen in de Europese rechtspraak die we hierboven al behandeld hebben: “This is exactly what occurred in Volker and Markus Schecke, a judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU […]. In this case the Court was asked to determine whether a regulation mandating the publication of all beneficiaries of European agricultural funds in order to increase transparency of EU funds would clash with the farmers’ rights to privacy. The Court actually found this publication requirement invalid under EU law. Yet it reached this conclusion not because the EU legislature actually breached the fundamental right to privacy but rather because it failed to identify alternative methods of publishing information and attaining the same transparency objective while causing less interference in the private sphere of individuals. In particular the Court came to this conclusion by observing that: ‘There is nothing to show that, when adopting [the contested act], the Council and the Commission took into consideration methods of publishing information on the beneficiaries concerned which could be consistent with the objective of such publication while at the same time causing less interference with those beneficiaries’ right to respect for their private life in general and to protection of their personal data in particular, such as limiting the publication of data by name relating to those beneficiaries according to the periods for which they received aid, or the frequency or nature and amount of aid received.’ (para 31)”[63]
Wanneer we volgens Alemanno zouden stoppen met het catalogeren van deze toetsingswijze als een nieuwe en aparte soort en het enkel maar beschouwen als een zoektocht naar feitelijke onderbouwing van de gevoerde belangenafweging, dan zal deze aanpak niet alleen als minder controversieel maar zelfs als opportuun of nodig bestempeld worden: “It is submitted that the legitimacy concerns, when addressed from an ‘evidence-based judicial reflex’ perspective, appear fundamentally misplaced. First, while it is true that the weighing of policy goals should belong to the legislator, it has long been accepted that courts may consider – within the scope of their competence – policy arguments when called upon to interpret general principles of law. Failing to do so, how should courts determine policymakers’ compliance with open-ended principles, such as those of good administration, subsidiarity or proportionality in a given instance? In providing a structured test for the justifiability of public action, these principles typically create an ‘argumentative space’ but, due to their open-texture nature, fail to provide a framework for conducting their fundamental determinations. While it is clear that the legislator is better placed than courts to conduct in-depth inquiries into social, economic or political assessments required by these general principles, courts also need – in order to discharge their judicial duty – a degree of evidence-based policymaking with respect to the substantiation of the same principles. This appears well illustrated in the Volker und Markus Schecke judgement […].”[64]
Bovendien creeërt ook soft law inzake de bewaking van de wetgevingskwaliteit legitieme verwachtingen bij rechtssubjecten die uiteindelijk juridisch gehonoreerd moeten worden: “Moreover, one must observe that virtually all the procedural requirements, despite their formal legal status, tend to be contained in guidelines, circulars, and documents that are well known due to their vast publicity and, as a result, trigger legitimate expectations. This suggests that, even in the absence of SPR, one may expect that courts would do justice to the expectations that these procedural rules generate in interested parties. Therefore, seen from this perspective, the turn towards a more evidence-based review seems to address the impending need to check the exercise of policymakers’ increasing scope of action ensuing from the implementation of these requirements and the subsequent call for more protection. Indeed, as Elaine Mak acutely observed, the emergence of a more procedural-oriented review also reflects ‘the increased demand of accountability of rule-making in the light of fundamental rights standards’.”[65]
Daarenboven biedt de verbeterde informatiegaring nog andere voordelen: “The spread of the ‘principles of proper law-making’ means not only that more information becomes available from the elaboration of the initial act but also that more evidence becomes accessible when courts check its legality. This may not only increase the stringency of the scrutiny exercised by the courts, which now expect – together with the parties – that laws be evidence-based, but also facilitate the exercise of such a review. […] In particular, a more evidence-based approach to judicial review seems in turn capable of promoting a broader culture of proof, evidence and rationality in policymaking. By nudging courts to engage with evidence drawn from different disciplines, the integration of IA into policymaking forces judges to leave their ‘comfort zone’ and engage with bodies of knowledge different than the law, such as statistics, economic analysis, public surveys, etc. While there is a risk that, due to their epistemic unease, courts may misinterpret or misuse the evidence available (or – what is worse – even delegate their responsibility to other non-majoritarian actors, such as experts), the interdisciplinary analysis contained in IA provide them with a needed framework to assess the socio-economic findings and reasoning underlying most constitutional (or administrative) principles of law.”[66] Rechters mogen zich dus volledig op de aanwezigheid van studies en van experts verlaten, maar moeten zelf ook het nodige studiewerk verrichten en zich hierbij onder meer baseren op de diverse inzichten uit de mens- en maatschappijwetenschappen.
Binnen deze discussie spelen de methodiek en de resultaten van de Impact Assessment een rol die in belang groeit: “[B]y virtue of the ‘evidence-based judicial reflex’, judges may be guided in their legal assessment – without being bound to them – by the determinations offered by IAs. Given the frequent tendency of judges to common-sense assumptions, intuitions and anecdotal evidence while exercising judicial review, this development must be welcomed. Too often judges prefer – in the name of the principle of jura novit curia – to rely on their own personal knowledge and guesswork while adjudicating rather than grounding their evaluations in empirically sound arguments. It is therefore argued that the ready-availability and increasing judicial references to IA may counter the natural tendency of judges to apply a predominantly intuitive rationale in judicial review and promote a more rational-based approach to adjudication. This may provide a powerful incentive for judges to enhance their epistemic capacity and advocate, as a result, not only a more interdisciplinary understanding of the law but also more judicial engagement at a time of evidence-based policymaking. This seems particularly suited to address the impending need to check the policymakers’ compliance with these rationality requirements and the subsequent call – prompted by legitimate expectations of greater rationality – for more oversight. Of course, this is not to suggest that courts replace policymakers in the evaluation of complex socio-economic evaluations, but rather that courts be assisted by robust and comprehensible analysis enabling them to effectively discharge their duty of review.”[67] Samengevat kunnen we enigszins provocerend beweren dat SPR als een afzonderlijke en geijkte toetsingsmethode eigenlijk ‘much ado about nothing’ is…
V. De gewenste methodiek voor de rechterlijke toetsing
V.1. Enkele inzichten uit de rechtsleer
Hoe moet het nu verder van de rechterlijke toetsing van democratisch gelegitimeerde wetgeving? Popelier pleit alvast voor een voortzetting van deze toetsing, maar dan wel voorzichtig en genuanceerd: “While judicialization of regulatory reform tools raises many questions, some objections […] call for more nuanced differentiations.
Firstly, while regulatory reform is indeed part of a competitive market strategy, it also pursues other objectives more closely related to finalities of judicial review, such as institutional balance and legitimacy. Hence, courts are sometimes given an explicit mandate to review procedural safeguards. Moreover, efficiency and efficacy standards underpinning regulatory reform programs converge with the criteria operationalizing the legal proportionality principle. Nonetheless, it is a thin line – sometimes obscure – between the legal assessment of evidentiary material establishing legislative reasonableness on the one hand, and the mere judgment on the opportunity of the methods and conclusions drawn from the data.
Secondly, the risk that excessive judicialization may stifle regulatory reform should be taken seriously. However, there is no need to exaggerate this objection, as courts usually refer to procedural rationality in order to support legislative interference, without requiring the use of well-defined instruments or methods. In his contribution, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov confirms that courts in the U.S. but also in Europe refrain from exercising pure procedural review when no individual rights or other substantive values are at stake. […]
Thirdly, while regulatory procedures are often laid down in ‘soft’ administrative guidelines to avoid judicialization, the criteria incorporated in these guidelines support the interpretation of open-textured legal requirements such as ‘reasonableness’ and ‘proportionality’, and, in doing so, reinforce legal certainty. Also, while regulatory reform promotes the use of soft law, judicial review of procedural requirements may prevent circumvention of democratic safeguards such as representativeness, transparency and accountability.
Fourthly, courts should remain vigilant that a duty to base laws upon scientific evidence does not affect political responsibility. In this regard, they should limit themselves to shape minimum criteria for governance processes, while allowing political actors to refine procedures and to allow for the consideration of political factors. As Dawson puts it: ‘The ‘catalytic’ court, even if it can and should not substitute its own judgment for that of the political actors of new governance itself, may at least provoke a process of dialogue and reflection able to make regulatory decisions more cognisant of a broader ‘public’ interest.’
Finally, several strategies were suggested to deal with the limited capacity of courts to judge the quality of administrative procedures within the regulatory process. A first requirement, however, is for courts to acquire a minimum of interdisciplinary skills in order to be able to read documents such as impact assessments, unfamiliar to their legal training. In her contribution […], Elaine Mak stresses how courts are increasingly expected to use insights from other disciplines in the process of judicial decision-making. As it turns out, process review is not free of engagement for courts.”[68]
Ook Bar-Siman-Tov pleit voor een genuanceerde aanpak: “So, is the SPR the best or the worst of both worlds? It is neither. This emerging model is not as abhorrent as the flood of criticisms it attracted would make it appear, but nor is it a panacea to all the problems associated with substantive or procedural judicial review. It is merely another proof that with judicial review models, like anything else in life, you can’t eat the cake and keep it whole. At the end of the day, I believe that, on balance, the emergence of a semi-procedural model of judicial review is a legitimate and desirable development. I think its advantages of protecting fundamental rights, while also promoting important procedural principles, respecting legislative choice, and fostering dialogue, outweigh its objectionable aspects. Nevertheless, […] this model can be structured and employed in ways that will further decrease its objectionable features.”[69]
Hierboven heeft hij al een aantal bezwaren aangegeven die inherent aan de semi-procedurele toetsing blijken te zijn. Hij vat ze nog even samen: “In the current judicially-created version of SPR, the adequacy of the legislative process is but one consideration that complements substantive balancing tests in determining the permissibility of constitutional infringements. This creates several problems. First, there is significant uncertainty as to the role and weight of the procedural aspect in the overall judicial decision, which creates inconsistency in the case-law and impairs the ability of legislators and litigants to orient their behavior. Second, it gives judges unbridled discretion in deciding in each case how much weight to give to the procedural aspect, which invites arguments that SPR ‘would function merely as an excuse for covert review of the merits of legislation under standards never expressed and more or less arbitrarily applied’. Third, […] it means that judges continue to make significant substantive judgments about issues such as the legitimacy of certain objectives, the permissibility and overall cost-benefit justification of certain means, etc. It thereby remains too close to pure substantive judicial review, and undermines two related advantages of procedural review: respect to the substantive choices of legislatures and avoiding arguments against judges making substantive value judgments.”[70]
Als antwoord op deze bezwaren heeft Bar-Siman-Tov enkele suggesties geformuleerd om te komen tot een – in zijn ogen – meer legitieme semi-procedurele toetsing. Zijn toetsingskader gaat als volgt: “My suggestion is that the question of whether the law was enacted through the required procedure will be the decisive, and in fact sole, consideration in determining the permissibility of constitutional infringements. At the first stage, courts should engage in ordinary substantive review to determine whether there is a constitutional infringement and evaluate the severity of that infringement. At the second stage, in which courts determine the permissibility of infringement, the adequacy of the legislative process should completely supplant, rather than supplement, the substantive balancing tests. That is, the stage of determining whether there is a constitutional infringement will be purely substantive, whereas the stage of determining the permissibility of infringement will be purely procedural. Thus the role of courts under SPR will truly transform from society’s ultimate balancers of rights and interests to ensuring that legislatures act as more responsible balancers of rights and interests.
Admittedly, this suggestion will require a radical change in judicial doctrine and practice. It might also be more appropriate in legal systems (or type of constitutional issues) in which the substantive balancing tests are judicially-created rather than mandated by a constitutional limitation clause. […] Moreover, the suggestion is not as radical as may appear, because […] I suggest that SPR be employed only in cases in which there is reasonable disagreement about rights and their balancing. In cases of egregious rights violations, there will still be room for purely substantive review. At any rate, a more modest proposal is that even if the procedural review will continue to be exercised alongside or as part of the substantive balancing tests, courts should be clearer and more consistent about the precise role the procedural review plays.”[71]
Als een logisch gevolg hiervan stelt Bar-Siman-Tov zich de vraag wanneer de SPR niet gebruikt mag worden: “SPR should not be employed in cases of egregious human rights violations. In such cases, courts should exercise purely substantive review and invalidate the law regardless of the adequacy of its enactment process. This is based on the position that while protecting fundamental rights is not the only valid justification for judicial review, it should be a sufficient justification, at least in cases of egregious rights violations. In such egregious cases, even an exemplary legislative process should not be a valid reason for upholding the law. Furthermore, even if the egregious law was enacted through a defective process, thereby giving courts the option of striking it down on procedural grounds, SPR is still not appropriate. That is because it is important that courts be clear that the substantive violation here is the sufficient and sole reason for invalidating the law. Otherwise, it will send a message that such violations may be upheld if a proper process is followed. In addition to putting courts in a position of sending a wrong societal message, it may put courts in the position of having to violate their dialogic promise in a ‘second look’ case.
In short, in cases in which the substantive violation is so flagrant that the law should be invalidated under any reasonable exercise of purely substantive judicial review, SPR should be avoided. SPR should be applied only in cases in which the adequacy of the legislative process can and should make a difference in determining constitutionality. Similarly, SPR should not be employed in cases of egregious defects in the legislative process, such as when the law was enacted in blatant violation of the basic constitutional lawmaking requirements. In such cases, courts should exercise purely procedural review and invalidate the law regardless of its content. This is based on the position that the importance of protecting the rule of law, constitutional supremacy, and essential elements of procedural democracy, mandate that courts should have the power to invalidate laws due to egregious flaws in their enactment process, even when no substantive rights or values are at stake.”[72] De vraag wordt dan echter waar we in concreto de grens trekken.
Hij pleit hierbij voor een eensluidende aanpak en/of methodiek bij de rechterlijke toetsing: “In the current case law, there is inconsistency and uncertainty on whether the adequacy of legislative procedures is an equally relevant consideration both in concluding that infringements were permissible and in concluding that infringements were impermissible. A couple of American federalism decisions demonstrate the problem. In an earlier decision that invalidated a law, the court gave the impression that the adequacy of legislative findings was central in determining unconstitutionality. However, in a latter case that raised essentially similar constitutional issues, the court invalidated the law even though Congress meticulously assembled legislative findings. These decisions were rightly criticized for their inconsistency and for giving the impression that judges changed their approach as to the relevance of legislative findings according to the desired outcome. They were also justly criticized for the rule they appeared to establish, taken-together: that while inadequate legislative findings can serve as a consideration to nullify laws, even the most extensive legislative investigations and findings will be an insufficient consideration for sustaining laws.
I believe the adequacy of the legislative process should equally apply as a consideration for invalidating laws and for sustaining them under SPR. That is, a proper legislative process should weigh in favor of sustaining laws to the same extent that a flawed enactment process should weigh against their constitutionality. The same principle applies with greater force to ‘second look’ cases – cases where courts review the validity of legislation enacted to replace a law invalidated in a previous semi-procedural decision. When courts invalidate a law under SPR, they send the message that the same law may be re-enacted as long as proper legislative process is followed. As we have seen, this feature is an essential component in this model’s dialogic quality and in its overall justification. Hence, when essentially the same law as the invalidated statute is passed through the required process, courts should be true to their promise.”[73] Los van zijn pleidooi voor een ééngemaakte aanpak, vergist Bar-Siman-Tov zich m.i. toch enigszins bij zijn analyse van de twee arresten. Zo heeft deze Amerikaanse rechtbank geen arresten geveld op basis van een semi-procedurele toetsing, maar wel op grond van een schending van het formele motiveringsbeginsel in het eerste arrest, en op basis van een inhoudelijke toetsing aan de grondrechten in het tweede arrest. In beide gevallen doorstond de wetgeving de verschillende toetsen niet. Rechtbanken, bijv. het Grondwettelijk Hof, zijn niet verplicht alle motieven voor het annuleren van wetgeving in hun eerste arrest op te sommen aangezien één motief volstaat. Dus van een ongelijke aanpak is er m.i. hier wellicht geen sprake.
Een derde en laatste aanbeveling van Bar-Siman-Tov betreft de juridische grondslag voor de (semi-)procedurele toetsingscriteria: “As we have seen, the type of procedural requirements enforced under SPR has crucial importance to this model’s legitimacy. SPR is most justifiable when it is constitutionally-mandated. Procedural entrancement of certain rights or substantive values through statutory or internal parliamentary rules would also significantly increase the legitimacy of SPR, theoretical controversies about legislative entrenchment notwithstanding. When courts turn to enforcing judicially-created heightened standards, however, they jeopardize the legitimacy of SPR. To be sure, the arguments for protecting rights, promoting democratic procedural values and fostering political and societal dialogue can justify enforcing unwritten judicially-created procedural principles. However, I believe courts should limit themselves to ensuring the possibility for participation and a minimal level of deliberation and debate in the legislative process. A more demanding level of procedural requirements would provoke arguments about judicial intrusiveness, court’s lack of legitimacy and competence, and may unduly hinder the possibility of re-enactment. Judicial imposition of too-demanding rational-legislating standards is also hard to justify from the perspective of the theoretical justifications for procedural review.”[74] Ook Popelier heeft hierboven al gepleit voor het ontwikkelen van minimumstandaarden voor transparantie en consultatie tijdens het besluitvormingsproces, waaronder wetgevers niet mogen gaan.
Dit alles brengt Bar-Siman-Tov tot het volgende besluit: “Constitutional rights (and perhaps other substantive constitutional values) will be protected on two levels. Egregious substantive violations will be subject to judicial invalidation regardless of the quality of the legislative process. Lighter infringements, in which constitutionality is a matter of reasonable disagreement or a wide ‘margin of appreciation’, will be subject only to procedural safeguards in the sense of ensuring the possibility for participation and a minimal level of deliberation and debate in the legislative process. The integrity of the legislative process and procedural democratic values will also be protected on two values. All legislation will have to satisfy the most basic procedural lawmaking requirements, such that a flagrant violation of these requirements will be subject to judicial invalidation regardless of the content of the law. Higher standards of lawmaking, such as adequate deliberation, will be required only in enactments implicating constitutional rights or values, and there requirements’ violation will only be subject to judicial invalidation in cases of substantive infringements.
I believe the suggested principles may represent the optimal scheme of judicial protection of both substantive and procedural values. Admittedly, it is impossible to predict which judicial review scheme will actually bring about optimal levels of legislative respect for substantive and procedural values. My argument, therefore, is not consequentialist. Rather, I argue that these principles may lead to the optimal scheme from the perspective of the legitimacy of judicial review, for it will ensure that SPR (and each of the pure models) is employed when it is most justified in a way that is most justifiable.”[75] De inzichten van Bar-Siman-Tov zijn dus vooral bedoeld om de rechterlijke toetsing in de praktijk te optimaliseren.
V.2. Een voorstel tot inhoudelijke toetsing
Wat Bar-Siman-Tov hierbij echter over het hoofd lijkt te zien, is dat zijn toetsingskader nog steeds een inhoudelijke beoordeling vergt. Dit leidt tot meerdere vraagtekens. Vooreerst rijst de vraag welke mensenrechten (of grondrechten) een inhoudelijke toetsing vereisen, en welke niet. Welke grondrechten zijn dermate belangrijk dat zij inhoudelijk getoetst moeten worden? Vervolgens duikt de vraag op wat we onder ‘egregious’ of flagrant moeten verstaan: welke schendingen zijn dermate flagrant dat een substantiële toetsing zou volstaan? Tot slot is de vraag niet beantwoord wat we precies onder een kwaliteitsvol of zorgvuldig democratisch besluitvormingsproces moeten verstaan. Hoe kan of moet de rechter aantonen dat de vereiste belangenafweging al dan niet op afdoende wijze plaatsgevonden heeft? Deze onbeantwoorde vragen brengen met zich mee dat een inhoudelijke toetsing van wetgeving nodig zal blijven en dat er dus bijhorende inhoudelijke evaluatiecriteria zullen ontwikkeld moeten worden. Laten we dit nu eens proberen.
Voor de uitwerking van een eigen voorstel van toetsingskader is correct te vertrekken vanuit de stelling van Bar-Siman-Tov dat bepaalde grondrechten, en bepaalde flagrante schendingen van deze grondrechten, per definitie een inhoudelijke toetsing vergen. De vraag is dewelke. Nu bestaan er bij nader inzien twee soorten grondrechten: zij die beschermen tegen excessieve overheidsdaden, dit zijn de klassieke grondrechten, en zij die net overheidsdaden vergen om in de praktijk gebracht te worden, i.c. de sociaal-economische grondrechten. Cruciaal hierbij is de vaststelling dat de klassieke grondrechten in essentie een ordenend karakter hebben aangezien zij orde in de samenleving brengen. De sociaal-economische grondrechten vloeien daarentegen voort uit een sturend beleid aangezien zij maatschappelijke keuzes met zich meebrengen of minstens nastreven. Daar waar een ordenend karakter van het recht voordelen voor iedereen met zich mee brengt, is dit niet het geval voor sturende regelgeving. Daar geldt het adagium ‘kiezen is verliezen’, of sommigen zullen winnen, anderen zullen verliezen.
Dit verschil in karakter vereist nu net een andere toetsingsmethodiek. Samengevat komt mijn voorstel hierop neer: de aantasting van klassieke grondrechten door wetgeving moet getoetst worden aan zowel inhoudelijke als procedurele toetsingscriteria, terwijl voor de sociaal-economische grondrechten enkel een toetsing van de wetgeving aan procedurele criteria nodig is. Aangezien procedurele toetsingscriteria zich richten op het politieke besluitvormingsproces en de sociaal-economische criteria in wezen het uitvloeisel zijn van politieke beleidskeuzes of sturing, dient de rechter enkel te beoordelen of de politieke besluitvorming op een zorgvuldige (empirisch onderbouwd, transparant, en op basis van consultatie) wijze tot stand is gekomen. Ordenende grondrechten, daarentegen, vormen de grondslag en vloeien tegelijkertijd voort uit de maatschappelijke orde die aan de politieke besluitvorming op basis van meerderheidsbeslissingen vooraf gaan. Dit houdt in dat zij niet zomaar door de normale (= op basis van meerderheidsbeslissingen) politieke besluitvorming opzij geschoven kunnen worden, zelfs wanneer deze besluitvorming zorgvuldig gebeurd is. Een analyse van de daadwerkelijke impact van een beleidsmaatregel (= wetgeving) op het klassieke grondrecht, alsook de toetsing van het geoorloofd karakter van de wetgeving op grond van de beginselen van legitimiteit, geschiktheid, noodzakelijkheid en evenredigheid blijft noodzakelijk.
Hiermee hebben we echter nog geen zicht op wat deze inhoudelijke toetsingscriteria precies om het lijf (moeten) hebben. Waaruit moet deze inhoudelijke toetsing van wetgeving bestaan? Interessant hierbij is dat de Vlaamse overheid recent een heeft studie laten uitvoeren inzake de ‘onderbouwing en verdere uitwerking van het analysekader bij de opmaak van regelgeving ten einde te kunnen voldoen aan het beginsel van de gelijkheid van de burgers voor de openbare lasten’[76]. In deze studie staat een algemeen toetsingskader beschreven dat zeer interessant kan zijn voor de inhoudelijke toetsing van de maatschappelijke effecten van wetgeving, meer bepaald in het kader van de toepassing van het evenredigheidsbeginsel.
De studie begint door het onderscheid tussen ordenend recht en sturende regelgeving in kaart te brengen, en komt hierbij tot het inzicht “dat wetgeving een ordenend karakter heeft wanneer de wetgeving daadwerkelijk een oplossing voor een marktfaling biedt en die bovendien drie toetsen kan doorstaan die voortvloeien uit de kritiek op de theorieën van het algemeen belang. Concreet houdt dit in dat uit een analyse van regelgeving moet blijken dat:
- Er daadwerkelijk een ernstige marktfaling bestaat, waarbij het bestaan van transactiekosten in de analyse meegenomen wordt (geen utopische vergelijking die abstractie maakt van transactiekosten);
- Een privaatrechtelijke of niet-dwangmatige oplossing van de marktfaling niet mogelijk is, onder meer door de aanwezigheid van transactiekosten of spel-theoretische mechanismen;
- De baten of voordelen van de wetgeving tot oplossing van de marktfaling de kosten of nadelen ervan ruimschoots overstijgen;
- Er geen ongelijke verdeling is van de kosten en baten tussen verschillende doelgroepen binnen de samenleving;
- Er geen private belangen van de opstellers van de wetgeving (politiek of ambtelijk) aanwezig zijn, bijv. financieel of electoraal gewin bij de invoering van de wetgeving.
Wanneer de wetgeving niet voldoet aan minstens één (maar beter aan meerdere) van deze vijf criteria voldoet, dan kunnen we daaruit afleiden dat deze een eerder sturend of instrumenteel karakter heeft. Het is wel belangrijk om op te merken dat het laatste criterium in de praktijk moeilijk te toetsen valt. In die zin kan men stellen dat sturende regelgeving eerder als een ‘default scenario’ kan gezien worden, terwijl het ordenend karakter van wetgeving nauwgezet bewezen moet worden. Deze (eerder) zware bewijslast sluit aan bij het juridische beginsel dat inperkingen van of inbreuken op een grondrecht terughoudend moeten gebeuren, waardoor de vereiste compensaties zo volledig mogelijk moeten gebeuren. M.a.w., indien de invoering van ordenend recht leidt tot geen of minder compensaties voor de houder van het grondrecht, dan moet dit ordenend karakter dus objectief, eenduidig en onbetwistbaar aangetoond worden.”[77]
Op basis van het grote ordenend belang van eigendomsrechten in de samenleving verschaft de studie een rechtseconomische onderbouwing van de noodzakelijkheidstoets bij de aantasting van eigendomsrechten (of van andere klassieke grondrechten):
“Bij de noodzakelijkheidstoets is het daarom essentieel om na te gaan in welke mate een overheidstussenkomst vereist is om dit maatschappelijk probleem aan te pakken. Eveneens moet de vraag gesteld worden of er oplossingen mogelijk zijn die steunen op vrijwilligheid. Het is de taak van de wetgever om bij het ontwikkelen van het beleid aan te tonen dat het vrijwillig karakter (om bepaalde redenen) niet mogelijk is en er dwang vereist is. Volgende mogelijke redenen werden uit de literatuur geïdentificeerd:
- De externaliteit is van toepassing op grote groep eigenaars (hoge transactiekosten);
- Een ‘holdout’ en ‘freeloader’ probleem (hoge transactiekosten) door enkelingen.”[78]
Cruciaal hierbij is dat een compensatie van het geleden verlies niet volstaat, maar dat ook moet aangetoond worden dat de aantasting noodzakelijk was. In die zin maakt de toets van de noodzakelijkheid integraal deel van de evenredigheidstoets uit.
En ook de legitimiteitstoets of de verantwoording of bestaansreden van de wetgeving maakt deel uit van de evenredigheidstoets: “Bij de evenredigheidstoets is het dan weer belangrijk de vraag te stellen over wat men als een ‘normaal maatschappelijk risico’ kan beschouwen. Want wanneer de normale risico’s al in de waarde van een eigendomsrecht zijn opgenomen en het normaal risico zich alsnog voltrekt, het toekennen van een nadeelcompensatie een dubbel (en dus onterecht) voordeel voor de eigenaar zou opleveren. Volgens de literatuur kan men een abnormaal risico interpreteren als het risico dat groter is dan de gewone dagdagelijkse risico’s die eenieder neemt, maar ook als het risico dat een normaal voorzichtig en oplettend mens in dezelfde feitelijke omstandigheden niet zou hebben genomen. Drastische en onvoorzienbare wijzigingen in de wetgeving door eenzijdige en dwingende beleidsmaatregelen vallen buiten het normale risico aangezien de burger zich hier minder tot niet tegen kan voorzien. Als gevolg hiervan moet dus een koppeling gemaakt worden met de legitimiteitsvraag van de beleidsmaatregel. De burger kan zich immers beter instellen op en aanpassen aan overheidstussenkomsten wanneer zij een legitiem karakter hebben.”[79] Samengevat moet in deze fase bekeken worden of er wel degelijk sprake is van een maatschappelijk probleem, hoe groot (of risicovol) dit probleem is, welk gedrag of handelen hieraan ten grondslag ligt, en of de doelstelling die de beleidsmaatregel nastreeft, een antwoord op dit probleem biedt. Hier speelt evenwel slechts een marginale toetsing door de rechter.
Tot slot en pas dan moet in het kader van de evenredigheidstoets ook de mate of wijze van compensatie aan bod komen: “Op basis hiervan komt de studie tot de volgende regeling van nadeelcompensatie waarbij een onderscheid wordt gemaakt tussen vijf gevallen of scenario’s:
- 100 – 80%: altijd compensatie want dit vormt een quasi-onteigening.
- 80 – 60%: altijd compensatie, tenzij het een beleidsmaatregel betreft ter correctie van de negatieve externaliteiten die door het gedrag van de normadressaat veroorzaakt wordt, en dit gedrag schade veroorzaakt die meer bedraagt dan het waardeverlies.
- 60 – 40%: altijd compensatie, tenzij
- het een beleidsmaatregel betreft ter correctie van de negatieve externaliteiten die door het gedrag van de normadressaat veroorzaakt wordt, en dit gedrag schade veroorzaakt die meer bedraagt dan het waardeverlies,
- de beleidsmaatregel de transactiekosten verlaagt of een ordenend karakter heeft en de voordelen van dit ordenend karakter het waardeverlies meer dan compenseert.
- 40 – 20%: altijd compensatie, tenzij
- het een beleidsmaatregel betreft ter correctie van de negatieve externaliteiten die door het gedrag van de normadressaat veroorzaakt wordt, en dit gedrag schade veroorzaakt die meer bedraagt dan het waardeverlies,
- de beleidsmaatregel de transactiekosten verlaagt of een ordenend karakter heeft en de voordelen van dit ordenend karakter het waardeverlies meer dan compenseert.
- De beleidsmaatregel een inclusief herverdelend karakter heeft, op basis van een zuivere meerderheidsbeslissing gebeurt en de normadressaat niet kan aantonen dat de beleidsmaatregel een extractief herverdelend karakter op basis van rent seeking heeft.
- 20 – 0%: nooit compensatie want dit vormt een toepassing van het ‘de minimis’ principe.”[80]
Hierbij is het wel belangrijk “om de categorieën van het voorstel van nadeelcompensatie niet zozeer te zien als toepassingsvoorwaarden om al dan niet over te gaan tot een volledige compensatie, maar wel als een soort opeenvolgende vergoedingsschijven (cfr. de belastingschijven). Hierdoor kan het probleem van de ongelijke behandeling op een correcte manier aangepakt worden. Stel dat 90% van het eigendom door een beleidsmatregel wordt aangetast en de overige 10% niet, dan zal niet de volledige 90% zomaar vergoed worden, maar zal de vergoeding toegekend worden in de diverse vergoedingsschijven die bij deze 90% vermogensaantasting van toepassing zijn. De resterende 10% wordt hierbij uiteraard buiten beschouwing gelaten. Het resultaat is dat er nooit een vergoeding betaald moet worden t.w.v. van de eerste 20% van de totale waarde (laagste schijf), en vervolgens slechts 20% vergoeding betaald moet worden wanneer de beleidsmaatregel een negatieve externaliteit corrigeert, 40% moet betaald worden in het geval van een ordenende maatregel, en 60% indien er sprake is van een inclusieve herverdelende maatregel.”[81]
Samengevat is het onderscheid tussen het ordenend en sturend karakter van de wetgeving van groot belang bij de inhoudelijke toetsing aan het evenredigheidsbeginsel. Dit onderscheid is evenwel niet altijd gemakkelijk te maken, en nog minder gemakkelijk wordt dit onderscheid binnen de juridische wereld aanvaard. Daar heerst immers nog sterk het Kelseniaans denken, waarbij men zuiver formalistisch bekijkt of een regelgeving voldoet aan de ‘Grundnorm’ en of de totstandkoming van de regelgeving aan de vereiste procedures voldoet om rechtsgeldig te zijn. Maar zoals Kelsen zelf heeft toegegeven, is dit formalistisch rechtsdenken niet in staat gebleken de opkomst van het nazisme tegen te gaan. Een grondige inhoudelijke toetsing van wetgeving door rechters – in het kader van ‘Checks & Balances’ – zal dus steeds nodig zijn. Daartoe zullen er evaluatiecriteria ontwikkeld moeten worden die steunen op de bewezen en verworven inzichten van de rechtseconomie en andere mens- en maatschappijwetenschappen.
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[1] Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Cristian Pop-Eleches, Andrei Shleifer, “Judicial Checks and Balances”, Journal of Political Economy, 2004, vol. 112, nr. 2, p. 446
[2] Ibidem
[3] Ibidem
[4] Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Cristian Pop-Eleches, Andrei Shleifer, o.c., p. 447
[5] Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Cristian Pop-Eleches, Andrei Shleifer, o.c., p. 448
[6] Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Cristian Pop-Eleches, Andrei Shleifer, o.c., p. 468-469
[7] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, “Semi-procedural judicial review”, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2177877. This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the article. The final version is to be found at 6(3) Legisprudence (Dec. 2012), p. 1-2
[8] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, in Legisprudence 6(3), December 2012, p. 257
[9] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 258-259
[10] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 261
[11] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 261-262
[12] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 264-265
[13] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 265
[14] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, in European Public Law 17(3), September 2011, p. 518
[15] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 520
[16] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 521
[17] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 521-522
[18] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 267
[19] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 267-268
[20] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 268-269
[21] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 2
[22] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 2
[23] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 3
[24] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 3
[25] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 6-7
[26] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 7
[27] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 8
[28] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c. p. 8-9
[29] Marc Tushnet, “Subconstitutional Constitutional Law: Supplement, Sham, or Substitute?” (2001) 42 William and Mary Law Review, p. 1879
[30] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c. p. 9
[31] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c. p. 9-10
[32] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c. p. 10
[33] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 519
[34] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 522
[35] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 523
[36] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 531
[37] Patricia Popelier, “Governance and Better Regulation: Dealing with the Legitimacy Paradox”, o.c., p. 532
[38] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 2-3
[39] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 7
[40] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 7-8
[41] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 8
[42] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 9
[43] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 10-11
[44] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 11-12
[45] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 12-13
[46] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p 14
[47] Koen Lenaerts, o.c., p. 15-16
[48] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 11
[49] Ibidem
[50] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 11-12
[51] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 12
[52] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 13
[53] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 13-14
[54] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 14-15
[55] Alberto Alemanno, “The Emergence of the Evidence-based Judicial Reflex – A Response to Bar-Siman-Tov’s Semiprocedural Review”, in The Theory and Practice of Legislation, Volume 1, 2013, p. 3
[56] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 5
[57] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 6
[58] Ibidem
[59] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 7
[60] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 8-9
[61] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 9
[62] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 9-10
[63] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 11
[64] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 12
[65] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 13
[66] Ibidem
[67] Alberto Alemanno, o.c., p. 13-14
[68] Patricia Popelier, “Preliminary comments on the role of courts as regulatory watchdogs”, o.c., p. 269-270
[69] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 15
[70] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 16
[71] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 16-17
[72] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 18-19
[73] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 17
[74] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 17-18
[75] Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, o.c., p. 19
[76] Het rapport staat online: https://www.ruimtevlaanderen.be/NL/Diensten/Onderzoek/Studies
[77] Bernard Van Heusden, Wim Marneffe, Jan Theunis, Anne Mie Draye en Jona Voorter (Universiteit Hasselt), “Onderbouwing en verdere uitwerking van het analysekader bij de opmaak van regelgeving ten einde te kunnen voldoen aan het beginsel van de gelijkheid van de burgers voor de openbare lasten”, onderzoek i.o.v. het Departement Kanselarij en Bestuur en het Departement Omgeving, Vlaamse Overheid, 4 oktober 2018, p. 7-8
[78] Ibidem, p. 9-10
[79] Ibidem, p. 10
[80] Ibidem, p. 13-14
[81] Ibidem, p. 14-15
