Brussels, 23/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - The presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament adopted, on Thursday 19 March, the third package of reforms aimed at revising the institution's internal procedures. Changes agreed by the conference of presidents concern the operation of committees and inter-parliamentary delegations. The first two packages, adopted in autumn 2007 and autumn 2008, related to the organisation of plenary sessions, the handling of EP reports, the operation of the legislative process and improvements in inter-institutional relations. The human rights and security and defence sub-committees have been renewed. The maximum and minimum number of members within EP parliamentary committees will be decided by the EP constituent session, and this is the only question remaining open.
Changes agreed in the conference of presidents on 12 and 19 March include the following reforms: - allow the use of joint committee meetings for complex legislative dossiers that cross committee boundaries; - make it mandatory for the conference of committee chairmen to give a recommendation to the conference of presidents on how to resolve any conflict of competences between committees; - generally increase cooperation between committees, notably by enhancing the role of opinion-giving committees; - rename “temporary committees” as “special committees”; - “deneutralise” the petitions and fisheries committees whilst leaving the budgetary control and women's committees neutralised (at present MEPs can generally be full members of only one committee and a substitute member of up to two others, but a few committees have a “neutralised” status, which means they do not count towards these limits); - increase the involvement of inter-parliamentary delegations in the work of committees and vice versa; - make memberships of joint parliamentary assemblies and the bilateral inter-parliamentary delegations for the countries concerned more coterminous: - and update arrangements with the Commission to improve the operation of election observation missions. (L.C./transl.jl)