National Parliaments and European Commission: 2008 Report

The EC Commission has published its annual report on its relations with national parliaments (COM (2009) 343).

Back in 2006, the Commission published a rather verbose paper (Com (2006) 211) stating on page 9 that it would provide all national parliaments in the member States not just consultation documents prepared by the Commission (green and white papers and communications), as already required by the Protocol to the Treaty of Amsterdam, but also all new Commission proposals. We noted this here.

Since then, the number of opinions received from national parliaments has increased steadily from 53 in 2006, 115 in 2007 to 200 in 2008.

The 2008 report makes quite interesting reading generally. There's a section on the effects of the opinions received on policy. The opinions of national parliaments tended to be in line with the positions taken by the member States in Council.

Comments

[coupon sports]

thanks for the useful info

[Joe]

So state parliaments are now more comfortable giving their opinions to the European Commission?

[doc]

thanks for this post