Risk of paralysis as MEPs fight Euro-elections

Date: 12/03/1998

By Myles Neligan

DETERMINED efforts are already under way behind the scenes to prevent the EU's legislative process from grinding to a halt next year following the European Parliament's decision to suspend normal operations for three months to concentrate on the June parliamentary elections.

Officials fear that an enormous backlog of legislative proposals will have built up by the time MEPs resume their normal duties after the summer break.

In particular, they are concerned that the suspension of parliamentary activities from May 1999 will hold up agreement in vital areas where the Parliament shares decision-making power with the Council of Ministers.

The prospect of widespread administrative disruption has prompted calls for formal rules to govern the Parliament's practice of taking time off for electoral campaigns.

At the moment, there are no established procedures for dealing with MEPs' unscheduled absence, and the Parliament's right to an electoral recess is not enshrined in any of the existing EU treaties.

"Given that we have an anomalous institutional set-up, whereby one institution is elected but the other two are not, formal procedures to govern Parliament's occasional absence from the scene would make sense," said a senior Council official.

"This issue will have to be addressed sooner or later," confirmed a European Commission official responsible for relations with the Parliament.

The problem will be more acute in 1999 than in previous election years because the Maastricht Treaty has greatly increased the Parliament's decision-making responsibility. More than 25% of new proposals must now be approved jointly by the Parliament and the Council, a requirement which has already put the system under strain.

"We have simply had to make time for all this extra work. In practice, this often means sitting up half the night," said an official in the Council's secretariat.

Officials in all three institutions argue that as the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty provides for a further expansion of the Parliament's decision-making powers, there will be an even greater need for working rules before the next round of parliamentary elections in 2004. "This is when the crunch will come," said a Council source.

For the time being, a unit has been set up to undertake the delicate task of coordinating the flow of legislative proposals between the institutions, to ensure that all urgent matters are dealt with before the May 1999 'deadline'.

Its members will make particular efforts to ensure that joint procedures launched in the run-up to the shut down are completed by the time MEPs return to their constituencies to campaign for re-election.

The Council, which has been identified as one of the bottlenecks in the system, will come under pressure to get ministerial agreement on outstanding legislation sooner.

The programming unit will also urge the Commission to issue fewer new proposals from next spring. "It will be more complicated this year, but we feel sure that we will be able to arrive at a solution in time," said a member of the unit.

The Parliament, sensitive to criticism from the Commission and the Council about its decision to down tools, is keen to emphasise that all the institutions have a role to play in ensuring that matters proceed smoothly.

"We cannot act until the Council presents its common position on a particular proposal, and that can take months. It's a bit rich for them to blame all the administrative delays on the Parliament's electoral recess," said one official.

The EP has decided to suspend normal activities for three months in 1999 to concentrate on the June 1999 elections.