Parliament curtails paper-chase to zoom in on more crucial business

Date: 25/07/02

By Peter Chapman

THE European Parliament is slashing the time it spends issuing reports on hundreds of routine EU documents in a bid to focus more of its scarce resources on scrutinising business legislation.

The assembly is also hoping to leave itself more time to ask tough questions of key policy-makers such as European Central Bank (ECB) President Wim Duisenberg.

In a little-noticed change to its internal rules, the assembly's committees will be told to concentrate on issuing reports in contentious areas - or ones where the Parliament has legal powers to table amendments to new laws.

'The whole idea is to focus on more relevant stuff,' said a Parliament official in charge of overseeing the changes in one of the assembly's 17 permanent committees. 'There will be fewer reports, and committees will have to be more selective as to which non-legislative issues to deal with - for example Commission communications, White Papers and Green Papers.'

He added: 'As for the work in plenary, non-controversial reports will no longer be debated, and amendments would not be allowed at the plenary stage.'

In practice, this will mean most reports passed in a committee with opposition from less than one-tenth of its members will go to plenary without a debate.

In another move, MEPs will be under tougher obligations to check the legality of any laws involving part of the EU's budget.

Also, Parliamentary efforts to change the amount of money allocated for a specific project must be approved by the specialist budgets committee.

The shake-up was announced without fanfare to members of the assembly's economic and monetary affairs committee (EMAC) by its chairwoman, German Socialist Christa Randzio-Plath, at a recent meeting. But, in private, experts say the move will mean radical changes to the work of key committees such as EMAC.

The committee will spend less time poring over reports, for example on the launch of the single currency.

Instead it will be able to focus on critical issues such as the raft of highly technical new laws in the EU's financial services action plan, such as the forthcoming 'investment services directive'.

For the first time, members will also be able to table regular written questions to Duisenberg.

Also, the Parliament will improve the way it administers Duisenberg's regular testimony to the committee - a boon for the hordes of ECB watchers such as professional economists unable to attend the event in person.

The same team of linguists that covers the plenary sessions of the Parliament will, in future, make a transcript of his speech and answers - rather than hard-pressed committee staff. 'This will be a great improvement,' said one official.

The European Parliament is slashing the time it spends issuing reports on hundreds of routine EU documents in a bid to focus more of its scarce resources on scrutinising business legislation.