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A curse is still hanging over the European Parliament’s legal affairs committee (JURI), which was still not able to vote on Thursday 21 June on the draft report by Angelika Niebler (EPP, Germany) on a draft directive to harmonise company insolvency rules (see EUROPE 11673).
After interpretation services had to stop on Wednesday (see EUROPE 12045), a fire drill interrupted the vote by forcing the MEPs to leave the room.
The JURI committee ended up deciding to postpone the vote for a second time to a future meeting in Strasbourg, probably early in July. The MEPs only had time to vote on forty or so amendments to Articles 1 and 2 of the text.
Amendments 6a and 6b. Another demand disturbed the start of the voting. Germany’s Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann (S&D) asked for the voting on compromise amendments 6a and 6b to be swapped according to article 174 of Parliament's internal rules. The latter foresees that in the event of alternative compromise amendments for the same article, the first to be voted on should be the one that is the most different from the initial text.
Although the rapporteur didn’t really agree with the interpretation that article 6b was more different, she did not oppose the request and the change in the voting order was given approval.
The difference in wording of the two amendments is barely noticeable, but we understand from a close source that there is a vast difference in practice. Underlying the amendments is the MEPs’ desire to foresee a safeguard clause for when company restructuring plans lay down measures that could affect workers, such as changing the organisation of work or contractual relations.
The compromise amendment 6b backed by the S&D, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups notes that in such cases, measures should be confirmed by workers 'in accordance with national legislation and practices', whereas Amendment 6a, backed by the rapporteur and her group, foresees this "in case national law and practices provide for such confirmation".
Amendment 6b is in favour of confirmation in all cases without changing the practicalities of how to do this in member states that already have this option, but Amendment 6a restricts this option.
The same source says that it is highly likely that Amendment 6a will be adopted, but the vote could be tight and won by only a few votes. The S&D, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups are represented by ten MEPs, whereas the majority in this committee is 13 votes so it would not be difficult to bring about a change. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)