Strasbourg, 16/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - On 15 January, MEPs decided to postpone the vote on the 2015 working calendar to one of the sessions in February (3-6 February or 24-27 February), while awaiting legal opinion on the possible reduction in the length of the sessions.
Ashley Fox (ECR, UK) and 14 other MEPs have tabled an amendment calling for the plenary sessions to be reduced from four days to three - a demand that European Parliament President Martin Schulz believed was inadmissible, quoting a judgment from the Court of the Justice of the EU in 2012 which opposes this. According to the chairman of the sitting, Rainer Wieland (EPP, Germany), who talked to Schulz, the Court stated that 12 plenary sessions were necessary per year and they must be of a length of four days to be considered as real plenaries. He added that the Court has given several judgments on the Parliament's plenaries. However, in Fox's opinion, it is “written nowhere (in the judgment) that this is forbidden for us”, and the judgment indicates that the general practice is of four days but that this is not written into the law. “I'm calling for this issue to be taken up at the level of the Conference of the Presidents and put to debate again”, said Fox.
“We should postpone (…) in order to know very clearly what the legal position on the calendar is”, said Edward McMillan-Scott (ALDE, UK) - a proposal adopted by the majority of MEPs. (CG/transl.fl)