Parent agency European Commission | ||
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The Directorate-General for Legal Service is a Directorate-General of the European Commission.
The Legal Service provides comprehensive in-house assistance to the European Commission and all its departments. Its resources have to be deployed to cover all Commission activities and areas of responsibility. In each area, it must be able to assist the Commission in its functions of drafting legislation and conducting international negotiations, as guardian of the treaties and in the exercise of the implementing powers conferred on it by the Community legislator or by the Treaties.
The service is responsible for ensuring all proposals made have a legal basis, if it finds a technical fault in any proposal then the proposal must be modified or dropped. The legal service may only be overruled by the College of Commissionners. As the service is under the President's remit, some argue it can be useful in allowing the President a way of sinking undesirable proposals from his colleagues as there is usually some technicality the service can raise - although they have been challenged in the European Court of Justice with some minimal success.