The inter-institutional negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament on the notification procedure directive appear to be stumbling over a series of political points, such as the period for freezing the adoption of national measures following an alert issued by the European Commission, according to our information, which we gleaned on Friday 27 April.
The Commission's proposed revision establishes a consultation period of three months to run from the date on which planned measures are notified. The Commission and the other member states then have a maximum of two months to submit their comments concerning a notified measure, followed by one month for the member state in question to respond to these observations. However, at the end of the assessment of the measures, the Commission may issue an alert if it considers that these measures do not comply with the 'services' directive and this alert will block the notifying member state from adopting the measures for a period of three months.
This seems to be a hard point for the Council to swallow. It adopted a general orientation on this legislative dossier, with a reduced level of ambition (see EUROPE 11797) and considers that this measure would not respect this principle. However, Parliament appears to be in favour of it. A source close to the dossier explained that such a measure exists for the free movement of goods, for instance. Another source added that the national parliaments could in any case adopt the measures in question once the period had ended.
Negotiations are struggling on other points of the legislative proposal, starting with the legal consequences of failure to comply with the notification requirement, which the Commission's proposal describes as a “substantial procedural defect of a serious nature”. The Council would like to delete this paragraph, but Parliament wants to keep it in. However, Parliament may make concessions over this dossier. The other subjects to be discussed include the authorisation regimes, requirements subject to the notification requirement and assessing proportionality, although on the last of these points, a source told us that convergence between the two institutions would be possible fairly quickly.
Over at the Council, the German delegation has presented a document for an exemption regime for activities related to town and country planning (see EUROPE 12009).
The next inter-institutional meeting will be held on 6 June. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)