Brussels, 25/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 23 March, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee debated the European Commission's draft report on programme simplification and regulation (REFIT).
In her draft report, rapporteur, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann (S&D, Germany), warmly welcomed the fact that Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president at the European Commission, is in charge of improving the regulation and also welcomed the commitment made by Jean-Claude Juncker to negotiate a new inter-institutional agreement. On the other hand, she was highly critical of the Commission's withdrawal of the texts that were already on the legislators' table (see EUROPE 11217). According to the draft proposal, Parliament “remains strongly opposed (…) to the intention of the Commission to withdraw a number of legislative proposals, in particular the directive on maternity leave, the legislative proposals on air quality and waste policy, the directive on transparency in pricing and reimbursement of medicines, and the proposal to revise the directive on national emission ceilings under the legislative follow-up to the climate and energy package”.
During the debate, Kauffman returned to one of the arguments put forward by the Commission during its presentation of its work programme: the fact that the withdrawn proposals have been blocked at the Council and no agreement appeared possible. According to Kauffman, this attitude could cause “an imbalance between the two branches of the legislative power”.
Heidi Hautala (Green/EFA, Finland) highlighted “the need to carry out a debate with the appropriate Parliamentary committees before withdrawing the text”. She also said that “it is up to the political bodies to decide”. Mary Honeyball, S&D United Kingdom, said that the European Commission had acted arbitrarily and had imposed this on the European Parliament. Angelika Niebler (EPP, Germany) adopted a much more measured approach and simply asserted the need to discuss the subject.
At the end of the debate, Pavel Svoboda (EPP, Czech Republic), the president of the parliamentary committee emphasised the fact that according to the treaties, “the European Commission had the right to withdraw legislative proposals”. The Commission representative explained that the European Commission remained attentive to the European Parliament' s responses in this connection. He pointed out that last January the MEPs had failed to agree on a common resolution on the Commission work programme (see EUROPE 11231). (Jean Comte)