The European Parliament’s conference of the presidents, meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday 15 September, agreed the arrangements and the schedule for the structured dialogue with the European Commission on possible suspension of structural and investment funding for Portugal and Spain.
The Commission will be invited to appear before the members of the parliamentary regional development (REGI) and economic and monetary (ECON) committees. The hearing will last two and a half hours, it will be public and open to all MEPs who are members of the above committees. Also invited to attend will be the members of the agriculture and rural development (AGRI), budgets (BUDG), employment and social affairs (EMPL) and fisheries (PECH) committees. The REGI committee will speak first but equal speaking time will be allocated to each of the two committees. The representatives of the other four committees will each be allocated five minutes’ speaking time.
Following the hearing, the coordinators will decide whether or not a second session will be needed. The first meeting is to be held in the course of the last week of this month (26-29 September) or the first week of next (3-6 October).
The composition of the group has already been detailed by EUROPE (see EUROPE 11619). It will consist of 46 MEPs: two chairs, 20 members from the two committee, selected by the d’Hondt method, and the chairs (or their representatives) of the four other parliamentary committees.
The sanctions that had been proposed against Spain and Portugal for failure to correct their respective excessive budget deficits were, ultimately, ruled out in August (see EUROPE 11605) on a proposal from the Commission (see EUROPE 11602). Similarly, the suspension of funding specified in the regulation laying down common provisions (Regulation 1303/2013, Article 23) could very well go the same way, in light of recent comments by Commission Vice-President responsible for Employment and Investment Jyrki Katainen (see EUROPE 11621). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)