The Estonian MEP Toomas Vitsut, Austrian MEP Reinhold Lopatka, Bulgarian MEP Kristian Vigenin, the President of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) Karl-Heinz Lambertz (S&D,Belgium), CoR members Michael Schneider (EPP, Germany) and François Decoster (ALDE, French) are now members of the workgroup on subsidiarity and proportionality and were announced by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Thursday 18 January.
These members were nominated by the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliament of the European Union (COSAC).
So far, the European Parliament has not yet appointed its three representatives, something the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, regretted on Wednesday 17 January (see EUROPE 11841).
The group will be chaired by Mr Juncker’s right-hand man, Vice President Frans Timmermans, and he will hold his first meeting by the end of January. The group is expected to meet up by 15 July (see EUROPE 11905).
It should be pointed out that this group had been announced by the President of the Commission during the state of the Union speech last September. Its aim is to work on "Scenario 4” (doing less but doing it more efficiently) presented in the White Paper on the Future of the Union and linked to the concept of the added European value that will guide the elaboration of the next multi-annual financial framework for the post-2020 period. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)