Protest tegen vervaging grenzen van bevoegdheden tussen Europees Parlement en Europese Commissie (en)
Auteur: | By Andrew Rettman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission is standing by its use of MEPs in legal brainstorming teams called "high-level working groups" despite internal and parliamentary concerns over democratic standards.
"This is part of our better regulation agenda," commission spokesman Gregor Kreuzhuber said, explaining that the groups are linked to industry commissioner Gunther Verheugen's 2005 plan to make fewer legal proposals that end up in the bin.
The informal groups bring together MEPs, member states' experts, commission officials, industry stakeholders and NGO delegates in 20 to 30-strong teams to advise the commission on legal proposals at the drafting stage.
Most of the 30 or so groups currently in existence do not involve MEPs, but three did have parliament members on them with another two MEP-staffed groups tabled for the future.
"It's a pity that we have empty seats on the groups on energy and the environment. But the groups' work will continue," Mr Kreuzhuber added. "They by no means deprive the European Parliament or member states of their treaty rights."
The "empty chairs" cropped up after European Parliament leaders in the past six weeks unanimously ordered MEPs to stay away over fears the groups cannibalise the chamber's official work.
Under EU law, the commission has the sole right to propose new legislation, most of which then goes into the "co-decision" process involving member states and parliament.
A spokesman for Liberal leader Graham Watson said "The position of our group, and indeed all groups on the conference of presidents, is that MEP participation blurs the distinction between legislature and executive."
"I don't think it's the role of MEPs to sit in such groups. The commission should propose legislation and then the European Parliament should consider it," a political assistant to Green MEP Claude Turmes indicated.
European Parliament committee chairmen are in principle free to second any MEPs they like to the commission groups, but in practice the commission "clarifies" which MEPs it wants to see, parliament officials stated.
The Green group is also concerned that the discussions are held behind closed doors, it is unclear how the talks impact commission decisions and there are risks the groups could kill off bills or bits of bills before they are born.
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The use of high-level groups has gone up under Mr Verheugen's deregulation drive, but the use of informal advisors at the pre-legal stage is nothing new in itself, the commission's Mr Kreuzhuber stated.
Most of the complaints come from disgruntled member states or political groups who did not get their own people into the policy units they wanted, he added.
But public bullishness on the issue hides some internal commission worries, which were aired in a February memo by Brussels' recently-appointed civil service chief, Catherine Day.
The memo praised the "exchange of ideas" notion but mentioned "incidents" on a group linked to the CARS21 environmental project where MEPs and member states' delegates pushed their party line instead of giving independent advice.
"In view of the...possible implications in respect of procedures and the sharing of competences foreseen in the treaties, the secreteriat general urgently recommends to stop creating expert groups that include high-level representatives of other institutions except in exceptional and duly motivated circumstances."
MEP leaders will meet on 11 May to try and find a way out of the stalemate, with plenty evidence of parliament goodwill to keep on taking part in consultations but on a more transparent basis.
"It's a point of principle. If MEPs get involved, it must be made clear that they act in an individual capacity and do not represent the parliament in any way," a senior parliament official indicated.
NGO Transparency International also has mixed emotions on the issue, with Transparency vice-chairman and ex-commission director general Dieter Frisch saying:
"I don't see a real problem, so long as the commission has sufficient professional expertise to make decisions itself and not to be guided from the outside."
"Taking advice from a wide field of people is a good thing. It's not what we did in my time there. We rather went ahead with our own ideas."
Requests by EUobserver to see a full list of working groups and their participants have born no fruit so far.