National parliaments to show Commission yellow card
The EU's national parliaments have struck a deal on stronger oversight of EU law, plotting a scheme that resembles the "yellow card" procedure foreseen in the EU Constitution.
The bold move was announced by Lord Grenfell, member of the British House of Lords and current president of the network of member states parliaments, COSAC, speaking at a parliamentary conference in the Hague on Thursday (17 November).
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Mr Grenfell said that in October, national parliamentarians grouped in the COSAC network agreed to draw up a common list identifying legislative proposals in the European Commission's annual work programme for 2006 that are potentially in breach of the principle of "subsidiarity".
The subsidiarity principle, enshrined in the EU treaty, states that the EU shall only take action when action at member state level is ineffective.
Mr Grenfell said that once the common list is established (by January), national parliaments will, shortly after the introduction of each proposal, tell Brussels whether or not they believe it has exceeded its competence.
The new watchdog initiative comes as an alternative to the so-called "yellow card" or "early warning" provision which was sketched out in the European Constitution, which has been put on ice after French and Dutch voters turned it down.
The constitution's yellow card provision states that the European Commission should review a legislative proposal, if at least one third of national parliaments send a "reasoned opinion" arguing that the proposal falls outside the commission's mandate.
No legal framework
The alternative plan hammered out by national parliaments broadly follows the early warning mechanism in the consitution, except that national MPs now lack the legal framework that would force Brussels to reconsider its initiatives once the one-third threshold is reached.
"We are aware that we don’t have the [legal] sanction of the yellow card," Lord Grenfell said at the Hague conference, staged by the UK presidency and the Dutch government.
"But we are where we are and we need to make the best of it," he added.
Jan Jacob van Dijk, Dutch christian democrat MP and member of COSAC, said that despite the absence of legal safeguards, the plan will "unleash unprecedented political dynamics," pressuring the commission politically to listen to national parliaments.
However, a commission spokesman said the commission will not feel bound by national parliaments' early opinions about its initiatives, as there is "no legal framework" for an enhanced role of national parliaments in the current EU treaty.
The spokesman said Brussels is "very careful" to endorse any initiatives resembling provisions in the shelved constitution, as this would mean "anticipating" its ratification process.
Italian parliament hesitant
The only national parliament that has not yet fully agreed to the new scheme is the Italian lower house, said one COSAC insider.
In October, the Italian delegation objected to the plan, arguing that a de facto implementation of a single aspect of the constitution - such as the yellow card - would reduce the chances of the adoption of the text as a whole.
But at the Hague conference the Italian senator and former European convention member Lamberto Dini expressed sympathy for the idea.
The European convention was the ad hoc body that drafted the constitution text.
Meanwhile, in the absence of the legal provisions of the constitution, much of the plan's success will depend on national parliamentarians' determination to press ahead with the scheme.
A pilot project on the parliaments' yellow card mechanism in April and May revealed large shortcomings, according to Belgian and Dutch officials.
Some parliaments did not participate at all in the project, while other parliaments became bogged down by legal wrangles on the meaning of the word "subsidiarity."
With many parliaments still inexperienced in pursuing a Brussels watchdog role, subsidiarity remains a "learning process", as several participants at the Hague conference noted.