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The Codecision procedure is one of the
legislative procedures (http://www.europa.eu.int/institutions/decision-making/index_en.htm)
of the European Union. For example, it is used as the legislative process for most directives.
The policy areas which require co-decision under the EU treaties as of 2004 are:
- non-discrimination on the basis of nationality
- the right to move and reside
- the free movement of workers
- social security for migrant workers
- the right of establishment
- transport
- the internal market
- employment
- customs co-operation
- the fight against social exclusion
- equal opportunities and equal treatment
- implementing decisions regarding the European Social Fund
- education
- vocational training
- culture
- health
- consumer protection
- trans-European networks
- implementing decisions regarding the European Regional Development Fund
- research
- the environment
- transparency
- preventing and combating fraud
- statistics
- setting up a data protection advisory body
(taken from http://europa.eu.int/institutions/decision-making/index_en.htm)
Under this procedure, legislation proposals are sent by the European Commission to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, who discuss them independently. If the bodies are unable to come to an agreement, a 'conciliation committee' is set up with an equal number of members from Parliament and Council in order to reconcile the two. Both bodies must reach an agreement in order for the legislation to pass.
If this procedure is used for a directive, the text proposed by the Commission
is also called directive proposal or draft directive.
The procedure has three phases, called readings, in which both, the Parliament and the Council, discuss the text on the table and take position.
The frest stage after the Commisison proposed a text is called 1st reading.
1st reading
Formally, the first organisation which has to act on the text is the European Parliament. The text is sent
to the relevant Committees of the European Parliament which discuss the issue and give reports to the other Members of the parliament, which finally vote on the proposal in a Plenary session.
In the Parliament's 1st reading, the majority of the votes which are given are enough to decide
this particular vote yes on adopting a motion, for example to adopt an amendment.
After the vote in the parliament, the Council of the European Union has its 1st reading on
the basis of the text from the parliament.
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 between 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 in order to reach a consensus with the parliament.
2nd reading
After the Council of the European Union has sent its common position to the European Parliament,
a time period of 3 months starts to run. If the Parliament does nothing within this time frame,
the common position enters into force as directive.
The Parliament can extend this time by one month if it decides so.
If the European Parliament does not agree, is has to adopt changes to the common position or reject the common position, the latter would end the codecision procedure at this point.
To change or reject the text in 2nd reading, the parliament needs an absolute majority of the 732 Members for a yes on an amendment - for each change.
If the text is changed the text goes for 2nd reading in the Council of the European Union:
Three possiblities:
- If all changes from the European Parliament are adoped by the Council, this text is adopted as directive and enters into force, but on the amendments where the Commission gave a negative opinion, the Council would have to act unanimously.
- If the council rejects the text, this codections process ends, the proposal is withdrawn.
- Otherwise, the conciliation phase starts within 6 weeks.
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.
Comments
Some critics contend that the codecision procedure gives too much power to the Commission and the Council, where lobbying takes places, particularly on behalf of important corporate interests, at the expensive of the Parliament, which is elected by the people.
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