The co-legislating institutions of the European Union are looking for solutions to ensure the continuity of the decision-making process in the coming weeks, as the containment measures imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic no longer allow for physical meetings to take place.
On Wednesday 18 March, Member States’ Ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) discussed a solution that would allow the EU Council to continue its work.
In lieu of physical meetings, which are no longer possible, the EU Council may use the written procedure. Nevertheless, this involves a major constraint: it requires the unanimity of the Member States to formalise it, which, de facto, means that all dossiers become subject to the unanimity of votes.
The EU Council therefore suggests a temporary derogation from its Rules of Procedure through the use of videoconferencing at its meetings. This participation would be counted as attendance and would thus provide the necessary quorum for decision-making.
As soon as the States have given their green light, the decision will be applied for one month, with the possibility of renewal.
However, a written procedure is required to validate this solution - and therefore the support of all Member States.
On Wednesday, the Member States were unable to reach agreement. They want to take the time to properly evaluate and consider the different facets of this decision before formalising it, a European source told us.
The discussion will therefore continue over the coming days.
See the EU Council’s exceptional measures: http://bit.ly/2IYNhdM
European Parliament considers holding a plenary session
The European Parliament is also considering the conditions for the rapid organisation of a plenary session, in particular regarding remote electronic voting.
An informal meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Political Groups (CoP) will be held on Thursday 19 March by videoconference. A future extraordinary plenary session will be discussed, the date of Wednesday 25 March in Brussels being brought forward to approve emergency measures to deal with the pandemic (see EUROPE 12448/7).
The political groups were asked to poll their members to find out who could be present on that day. The deadline for responses is noon on Thursday 19 March.
According to our information, some in Parliament are also considering a plenary session organised in a small committee, comprising the Presidents of the political groups and a number of MEPs proportional to the relative weight of the political group in the Chamber, as is provided, for example, for the National Assembly in France in the event of force majeure.
However, according to Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, Germany), convening a plenary session before the beginning of April is difficult to envisage. Together with Pascal Durand (Renew Europe, France) and Helmut Scholz (GUE/NGL, Germany), he wrote to the Chair of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO), Antonio Tajani, to explore the possibilities of organising remote electronic voting.
Since this situation will not be resolved in two weeks’ time, let's think about how to “allow the European Parliament to continue to function” and how to adopt, in these “exceptional circumstances”, “key dossiers”, he told EUROPE.
According to him, it is possible to vote on a piece of legislation in two stages through voting lists compiled by an MEP and then checked by Parliament administration through telephone confirmation with the elected representative. In a second phase, each Member would vote again on the text as amended.
In the medium term, the three MEPs call for the possibility of developing a token box to be explored for use by MEPs to table amendments remotely, for the purpose of electronic voting.
The question is whether this requires an amendment to Parliament Rules of Procedure and, if so, how. “Electronic voting exists”, but it is not specified that it should take place in the Chamber, Mr Freund said.
See the letter from the three MEPs: http://bit.ly/33ukeIL
In addition to the issue of remote electronic voting, Parliament is trying to organise itself to work remotely. A system has been set up to allow MEPs to listen to and participate in debates in their own language via their smartphone or tablet using a dedicated platform. The system could support a thousand remote participants.
Four Parliament meeting rooms would already be equipped to host meetings of parliamentary committees and/or political groups from next week. Four more rooms will be added shortly. The tool would allow remote voting. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel, Pascal Hansens, Mathieu Bion)