EULaw Making Process

The EU has three legal processes for law making: Codecision, Consultation and assent.

Today, the legal process under which most directives are decided is the co-decision procedure.

Co-decision procedure means that the EuropeanParliament decides together with the Council of the European Union. The Parliament not just consulted - as it has been the case before.

This is only intented as quick introduction and link page, a longer and likely better explanation by Xavi Druis Ferran

Quick crash introduction

codecision is a legislative procedure of the European Union which is used for a lot of directives.

Under this procedure, the EuropeanParliament and the CouncilOfMinisters have to agree to a common directive text before any directive can come into force.

The process is started by the European Commission by drafting a proposal for a directive (in often abbreviated as directive proposal or draft directive) to the EuropeanParliament and the Council of the European Union.

This starts the 1st stage of the process, which is called 1st reading.

1st reading

• In the EuropeanParliament public committees such as JURI, ITRE and CULT discuss the issue and give reports to the other Members of the parliament, which finally vote on the proposal.
• The decisions of the Council's are prepared by working groups which are put together by the member states and talk in secrecy. Even the documents they procuce are secret and not accessible by the public in a timely manner (at least for this directive, because the members of the working group have no interest in publicity)

In the Parliament's 1st reading, the majority of the yes/no votes which are given in the plenary sitting for this particular vote are enough to decide this particular vote yes/no. These votes in the plenary sitting are neccesary to adopt changes to the the proposal and send it into the next phase.

• In the ABC of The EP, below Powers of the European Parliament you find a short, oversimplified summary codecision procedure under which the report is tabeled. Oversimplified, because the EuropeanParliament can reject a directive proposal even on the 1st reading. It is pointed out at Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament number 67 and 68. It is not common, but possible.

This is the 1st half of the 1st reading.

After the vote in the parliament, the council decides on the basis of what the parliament voted.

It can do two things:

• Accept the text as voted in the parliament: This means the directive comes into effect as voted in the parliament.
• If it cannot agree with the parliament, it has to decide a common position beween the member states. As this always is a compromise between the member states, this is also often referred to as compromise, as in principle, the councils should take the postion of the parliament into account. However it's not bound to do so and nonetheless lobbyists can call it compromise. But apparently this habit from lobbyists seems to have stopped as probably most people have regognised that in this case, it was not a compromise with the parliament at all.

The common position is then sent back to the EuropeanParliament for a 2nd reading.

On May 18, 2004, the Council of the European Union has found a political agreement which was not the common position. It was a political agreeement about the common position. This means this is an agreement about it, but not the common position itself.

The common position can only be legally "signed" when the "compromise text" of the council is translated to all official languages of the EU member states first because if these translations come into force as directive if this common position is not changed or rejected by the European Parliament.

The common position is not the end of the common procedure. It's a possible end, but this entirely depends on the EuropeanParliament.

report by Arend Lammertink on the directive details with the Netherlands as a real-world example with additional comments from him. (OSNews: Dutch Parliament Considers Revoking Support for Patent Directive)

2nd reading

After the Council of the European Union has sent it's common position to the EuropeanParliament, a time of 3 months starts to run, after which, if the Parliament does nothing, the common position enters into force as directive.

The Parliament can extend this time by one month if it decides so.

To prevent that the common position from the Council comes into force as as directive, the EuropeanParliament has, before the time runs out, run a 2nd reading of the text in pleanar and either

• adopt changes to the common position
• or reject the common position, which ends this codecision procedure without directive at this point.

To change or reject the text in 2nd reading, the parliament needs an absolute majority of the 732 MEPs for a yes on an amendment - for each change.

If the text is changed, the European Commission examines the changed of the European Parliament and to these changes, the Council later needs to have an unanimous vote to accept these changes.

The commission sends this then to the 2nd reading in the Council of the European Union for decision.

Three possiblities:

• If all changes from the European Parliament are adoped by the Council, this text is adopted as directive and enters into force
• If the council rejects the text, this codections process ends, the proposal is withdrawn.
• If the council demands changes to the text, the conciliation phase starts

conciliation

For some time, representatives from the Council, the Commission and the Parliament meet in conciliation meetings and try to find a common text to which all cold agree upon.

Possiblities:

• If the consiliation committee does not come to a result, the proposal is withdrawn, the process ends.
• If the consiliation committee comes up with a text, this text goes into 3rd reading.

3rd reading

The outome of the conciliation is sent to Council and Parliament and if Council or Parliament reject this outcome, the proposal is withdrawn, otherwise it enters into force as directive.

political comments

The EuropeanParliament is really the only part of this procedure which is really open to represent a people, of course depending on the people on the people which are in charge of this dossier in the national governments and how mich the governments actually listen to national parliaments but you see this becomes a game of the political party play at the national level and of course of lobbying of large multinational companies and the dendency of the government to listen to them. In germany, the chancellor, who has selected the ministers is known as the "companion of the bosses" for this known and public affairs with CEOs of big companies, so you can estimate how the minister which has been put in place by him is sided.

The European Commission is ususally the lobbying place of big mulitnational and even american companies and their lobbying organisations (like the BSA, for example).

Thise procedure and the players in it are also known as the "democratic deficit of the EU" by political scientists.

References

For the furter possible steps, look at the presentation of law making processes
(On page 79, it has a good page diagram for a quick overview)

This is the graphic from the html version of the above which descibes the procedure in even more detail:

The Treaty establishing the European Communiy, article 251 has the legally binding rules describing the codecision procedure which the member states have agreed to.

The best overview gives this image:

• The Europarl's page on the Common Position handling(including 2nd reading and rejection)
• Xavi's page contains much useful information
• FFII's page about the codecision procedure
• Questions? -> http://europa.eu.int/europedirect/
• EU News: http://www.euractiv.com/

The Supranational decision-making procedures page below the EuropeanParliament Factsheets gives a condensed summary.

The Council of the European Union, Council of Ministers or just The Council

Guide and Search page of the Council about the codecision procedure
The Co-decision Guide(pdf) which is available there - it contains a very comprehensive view(from the viewpoint of the council)

German text: EULawMakingProcessDE