Operation
As said, it is mandatory for the Committee to be consulted on those issues stipulated in the Treaties and in all cases where the institutions deem it appropriate. The EESC may also be consulted on an exploratory basis by one of the other institutions, and may issue opinions on its own initiative (around 15% of its opinions are own-initiative opinions).
Own-initiative and exploratory opinions often raise the awareness of decision-making bodies, and of the Commission in particular, about subjects which have hitherto barely attracted their attention, if at all. Exploratory opinions drawn up at the request of other institutions before the Commission has even drafted its proposals enable the various components of organised civil society represented within the EESC to express the expectations, concerns and needs of grassroots stakeholders.
The Committee adopts on average 170 opinions a year on a wide range of subjects concerning European integration. It therefore plays an active role in the processes of shaping Community policies and preparing Community decisions.
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Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)