Spreektekst Presentatie COSAC- bijeenkomst, Dublin - Main contents

Spreektekst René Leegte bij XLIX COSAC in Dublin op 24 juni 2013

Dear colleagues,

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  It is nice to have the opportunity to address you in this side session. For the Dutch delegation, it is important to use COSAC for sharing best practices amongst us, as national parliaments
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  Therefore the Dutch Tweede Kamer has taken the initiative to offer the Irish Presidency an illustration of our EU scrutiny procedure, in this side meeting.
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  The aim of this presentation is twofold:

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  to show the Dutch practice of timely, selective EU scrutiny, which may inspire you to adopt similar procedures in your parliaments
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  to encourage the development of similar procedures in order to increase the possibilities for our cooperation in the yellow- and orange card mechanism.
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  In this presentation I will shortly

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  describe the main characteristics of our EU scrutiny procedure
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  quickly run you through the procedure
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  Thereafter I will outline the opportunities for our cooperation
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  And point out some possible improvements

Please do take the opportunity to interrupt and ask questions during my presentation in order to make maximum use of the time allotted to this session.

[NEXT SLIDE] Characteristics

There are four general characteristics of the system of timely, selective EU scrutiny in the Tweede kamer:

1 We have a decentralised system. Every standing committee is responsible for the European affairs in its respective policy area. The EU Affairs committee has a coordinating role and deals with horizontal issues (such as the MFF and Enlargement)

2 We attempt to influence not only EU proposals after they are presented by the European Commission, but also in earlier phases, for instance with consultations and green papers

3 We have debates with the responsible Minister before every Council meeting. These debates are open to the public. Before every meeting of the European Council we debate the Dutch position with the Prime Minister, and the results of the European Council are discussed shortly afterwards.

4 The system has evolved over the years with a growing number of subsidiarity checks and Reasoned Opinions. But also with technical briefings, thematic debates with government, roundtables with external parties, working visits to Brussels and video conferences

[NEXT SLIDE] - (first page communication Work Program)

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  I will now go through the procedure of the selection of priorities which takes place every fall.
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  The start is the publication of the Commission’s Work Programme. It contains many of the planned proposals of the European Commission for the upcoming year. It is the key planning tool in our scrutiny procedure

[NEXT SLIDE] - Scrutiny Brochure

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  The list of Dutch priorities is adopted at the end of each year on the basis of the Commissions Working Programme. It’s the list of planned EU proposals that our parliaments committees will pay extra attention to. The list also contains our planned Subchecks, parliamentary reserves.

[NEXT SLIDE] - Standard and Priority Scrutiny

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  So proposals that are not placed on our priority list, get the standard treatment: we receive a government-appreciation of the EU-proposal within 6 weeks and only if deemed necessary, we will have a debate on it.
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  The Priority proposals get the “VIP-treatment”. In deviation to the standard scrutiny we do not await the Government appreciation, but we proactively table the EU-proposal directly on the agenda of the relevant committee. The committees can decide within 1 or 2 weeks after the presentation of the proposal to organize all kinds of activities in order to collect information and prepare for a timely debate on the proposal.
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  And ultimately, the priority proposals could get an upgrade to the Presidential or Royal treatment: that is a subsidiarity check and a Parliamentary Reserve. The latter is a national instrument that we use in order to ensure a special information arrangement with the Government during the negotiations of the respective proposal. But more on these specific instruments another time.
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  And to be clear. This priority list is not cast in stone: additions/removals are possible during the year

[NEXT SLIDE] - So how does the procedure look like in the Dutch House of Representatives?

Slide oplezen/meelezen

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  In autumn there is the publication of the Work Programme of the European Commission
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  The programme is subdivided per theme/committee
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  Then we will organise debates for our information position on the priorities. We organise a stakeholders-meeting and a debate with a representative of the European Commission (2x Sefcovic and 1x Kroes)
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  Subsequently we will have a debate with the Government on it’s priorities
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  Afterwards, the House decides on priorities, intended sub-checks and parlementary scrutiny reserves
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  This list is translated into English and put on www.IPEX.eu

[NEXT SLIDE] Added Value

So what would improve if more national parliaments (if not all) would adopt similar procedures with a selection every year?

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  We could exchange information in a much earlier stage
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  This helps with identifying possible coalitions for the yellow and orange card procedure
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  But there is more to it. We could identify per Commission-proposal the group of national parliaments that are specifically interested. Coordination between parliaments will be much easier, and no time is lost once the Commission has presented a new proposal.

And most important: Being selective, is being more effective!

[NEXT SLIDE]

OK. And Finally, What could be improved?

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  The Commission work program is not a 100%-solid proof predictor of all the EU-proposals that are presented during the year. So improvements could be made there.
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  And with regard to the quality of Reasoned Opinions I see potential for improvement.

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    I think we can learn a lot from each other, that’s why I appreciate the invitation to this event very much. We should maybe think how to exchange best practices and lessons learned in a more structured way.
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    We can also learn a lot from comments from the European Commission. How do they regard the Reasoned Opinions that have been sent to them, what is their opinion? And we could maybe think of a general format for Reasoned Opinions, or some way in which we can prevent misunderstanding about whether a Reasoned Opinion is positive, negative or neutral.
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  And of course: More national parliaments could prioritize on the basis of the Commission’s Work Program.

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    So we could, for example, effectively exchange names and telephone numbers of MP’s and clerks on the level of particular EU-proposals. Perhaps social media such as face book could be used, comparable to international assemblies (NATO, OCSE)

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  And more general, information on the intentions of Parliaments, such as the leaflet of Dutch House of Representatives, should be spread widely, timely and in a structured way.

So to sum it all up: [LAST SLIDE]

Than I would like to invite my esteemed colleague William Cash of the House of Commons to illustrate his experiences