The European Parliament’s own initiative report on whistle-blowers faces a lot of obstacles. On Tuesday 31 January, the legal affairs committee coordinators decided once again to postpone the launch of the report.
An ad hoc alliance has developed among the coordinators of the ALDE, EPP and ECR groups and they ultimately rejected the decision made by the Conference of Presidents of Political Groups in December, judging that it was pointless to have two co-rapporteurs for a non-legislative text. The Conference of Presidents subsequently called on the coordinators from the legal affairs committee to reach an agreement on allocating the text to a rapporteur or apply a points system that would de facto attribute ownership of the report to the S&D group, to the disadvantage of the Liberals.
The Liberals and Conservatives intend to write a letter to the Conference of Presidents to oppose this decision.
One parliamentary source very critical of the quagmire in which this dossier is stuck exclaimed that this “is absolutely ridiculous”. According to the source, it is particularly regrettable that there has not been any coordination between the political groups so that the decisions taken at committee level can be followed by that at a level of the Presidents.
Another source explained to us, however, that the Conference of Presidents may approve the decision this time in favour of a dual steering of the text, due to the recent agreement between the ALDE and EPP groups obtained during the election of Parliament's president (see EUROPE 11705).
It should be pointed out that the own initiative report’s ownership is disputed between Virginie Rozière (S&D, France) and Jean-Marie Cavada (ALDE, France) (see EUROPE 11644). This rivalry has given rise to many different reports (see EUROPE 11632).
The draft legislation on whistle-blowers emerged following the controversial adoption of the “business secrecy” directive (see EUROPE 11532). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)