EP harnesses BR principles to improve lawmaking

Two recent documents give substance to the Parliament's commitment to BR.

1/ EP resolution on new EP-COM framework agreement

The European Parliament and the European Commission are currently discussing a new framework agreement between the two institutions, which is meant to update and improve working arrangements between them and enhance the quality of EU law.

The resolution adopted on 9 February 2010  sums up the key elements of the future agreement as the EP sees it, to include the following demands:

• Equal treatment for Parliament and the Council of Ministers in access to meetings and information;
• Follow up by Commission on EP legislative initiative requests;
• Cooperation between EP and COM on handling citizens' initiatives;
• Detailed review of Better Law-Making Inter-institutional Agreement;
• Improvement of the accountability of the executive by revised working arrangements;
• Better information of EP in international negotiations (in accordance with Lisbon);
• Improved arrangements for programming legislative work.

 See Euractiv comment.

2/ Cooperation in Better Lawmaking

In the meantime, the Committee on Legal Affairs discussed in March a draft report on better lawmaking (on the basis of the Commisison's 15th annual report on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality) (2009/2142(INI)). The EP draft report takes into consideration the changes introduced by the Lisbon treaty that replaced comitology by separating delegating and implementing measures, and introduced a European citizens' initiative and expresses a number of views, among which:

• "welcomes the closer involvement of national parliaments in the process of creating European law and particularly in the process of monitoring compliance of legislative proposals with the principles of subsidiarity";
• "undertakes to continue assessing the impact of amendments introduced to the Commission's proposals";
• "calls on the Commission to define precisely the 'smart regulation' agenda";
• The draft report also contains detailed recommendations on the future of administrative burden measurement and reduction at EU level.

For background, see Commission site on BR:  and "relations with other institutions and bodies."  The most recent Commission report on better lawmaking is also on-line.