Brussels, 01/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is not happy with the method chosen by the European Commission to complete Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
In a draft resolution adopted by the committee on economic and monetary affairs (ECON) on Tuesday 1 December, the MEPs argue that the creation of national competitiveness authorities, as suggested by the Commission, should be based on the Community method, whereby the European Parliament would be able to exercise its powers of co-legislator. “The ordinary legislative procedure should have been used”, they state. In addition, the future European budgetary committee, which the Commission wishes to set up (see EUROPE 11415), should report to the European Parliament and its opinions should be “public and transparent”.
The MEPs are also calling for the launch of negotiations on inter-institutional agreement on European economic governance. They argue that this instrument would allow them to exercise parliamentary control over the implementation of the budgetary process of the European Semester and the economic adjustment programmes of the countries of the eurozone under financial assistance.
In addition to the measures listed above, the Commission also proposed, in late October, gradually to rationalise the representation of the eurozone within the IMF. The leaders of the European Parliament, Germany's Martin Schulz, and of the ECON committee, Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy), criticised the Commission over its suggestion that it should be the responsibility of the president of the Eurogroup to represent the eurozone at the international financial organisation (see EUROPE 11416).
The draft resolution will serve as a basis for a debate with the Commission on the reform of the governance of the EMU, at the forthcoming plenary session in Strasbourg. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)