The decision has finally been made: the European Parliament's own-initiative report on the draft cross-cutting directive to protect whistleblowers will be headed up by French Socialist Virginie Rozière, the chair of the 'legal affairs' committee (JURI), Pavel Svoboda (EPP, Czech Republic), announced on Wednesday 12 April.
This decision ends a stand-off of several months between Parliament's S&D and ALDE groups (see EUROPE 11747). It will be made at the meeting of coordinators of the political groups to precede the meeting of the JURI committee. It seems to have been greatly to the displeasure of Jean-Marie Cavada (ALDE, France), who was calling for dual leadership for the report.
According to several sources, Svoboda, noting the absence of an agreement on the dual leadership of the report at the conference of the presidents of the groups, decided to use the points system to allocate the dossier, meaning that it automatically ended up with the S&D group and therefore Rozière.
Some perceive this “dropping” of the EPP group, which long backed Cavada, as the result of a 'grand coalition' style agreement between the president of the S&D, Italy's Gianni Pittella, and the President of the Parliament, fellow Italian Antonio Tajani of the EPP.
However, Cavada reportedly hoped to the end that an amicable agreement could be reached, with the Commission's recent launch of a public consultation (see EUROPE 11738) and the presentation of a trans-sector initiative around the end of the year. One political group would have got the own-initiative report and the other the legislative report.
At the last plenary, Cavada is reported to have met the S&D coordinator, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann (Germany), but no agreement was reached, according to one parliamentary source.
At the meeting of the coordinators on Wednesday 12 April, the EPP coordinator, Laura Ferrara (Italy), proposed dividing the spoils regarding the own-initiative report: the protection of whistleblowers in the private sector for one political group, the public sector for the other.
For his part, Cavada proposed to head up the report left aside by the S&D, stating that he was willing to run the risk of committing to the legislative report with no certainty that the legal basis used by the Commission would give JURI competence on the substance. There is a risk that the legal base will rule out the ‘JURI’ committee for this role, a parliamentary source told us.
Ultimately, Cavada failed to get his way. However, the S&D strategy seems to have split Parliament, as some see it as a desire to bag both texts, the non-legislative report and the legislative counterpart.
The timetable is now fairly tight: Parliament's own-initiative report must be adopted before the Commission presents its legislative initiative if it is to be taken into account.
At the Council, things are also progressing. The ministers held an initial informal discussion on the subject in March (see EUROPE 11757). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)