The Polish Presidency of the Council of the EU maintained that, following the Commission’s threat to withdraw the Directive on ‘green claims’ on Friday 20 June (see EUROPE 13664/1), the current situation no longer justified recourse to a trilogue, at a meeting between the permanent representatives of the EU Member States (Coreper) on Wednesday 25 June.
With Italy no longer on board (see EUROPE 13665/11) and the situation no longer sufficiently clear, Poland’s permanent representative felt that the Member States “should discuss an updated mandate”, a diplomatic source told Agence Europe.
The Polish Presidency intends to consult the Member States “in order to obtain further details on the situation and [their] position”, explained the same source.
Contrary to its initial announcement, the Commission reiterated that it would not withdraw the proposed Directive if micro-enterprises were excluded from the scope of the text. Laughter was heard among the Member States when the Commission said that the next steps were up to the co-legislator and that the Commission was ready to “facilitate the process”.
A number of Member States also intervened “quite forcefully”. Most of the 12 countries that took the floor found the Commission’s announcement “surprising”, “disappointing” or “regrettable”, according to another diplomatic source.
The Member States deplored “a worrying tendency” on the part of the Commission to withdraw files, pointing out that the Court of Justice of the EU had already stated in the past that the Commission “should not use its powers as a right of veto”, the same source noted.
On Tuesday 24 June, in a joint letter to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, the Presidents of the S&D and Renew Europe Groups, Iratxe García Pérez and Valérie Hayer, also pointed out that, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union, a proposal could be withdrawn as long as the EU Council had not acted, which is not the case here.
Expecting the Commission to respect the “principle of sincere cooperation”, the S&D and Renew Europe have asked Roberta Metsola to “defend Parliament’s prerogatives” by opposing the withdrawal of this Directive.
Poland now intends to coordinate with Denmark, which is due to take over the Presidency of the EU Council at the beginning of July.
See the letter from S&D and Renew Europe to Roberta Metsola: https://aeur.eu/f/hkj (Original version in French by Florent Servia)