The 12th COSAC took place in Paris on 27-28 February 1995. The prospects of a new debate on the future of the EU clearly influenced the agenda. The Maastricht Treaty had mandated a new IGC to be convened in 1996 to address a number of unsettled issues. The agenda for the IGC was partly known, because the Maastricht Treaty had identified a number of points, which, among other things, included the whole functioning of the EU in respect of enlargement and the extension of the “co-decision procedure” that put the European Parliament on an equal footing with the Council in the legislative procedures for certain policy fields. Member States’ governments decided at the Corfu European Council in June 1995 to establish a so-called “Reflection Group” under the chairmanship of the Spanish state secretary of foreign affairs, Carlos Westendorp, to prepare the IGC. The European Parliament was invited to send two participants to the group to join the representatives of the 15 governments.
The COSAC conference addressed the problem that the national parliaments were not represented in the reflection group for the preparation of the next IGC, and called for a closer association of the national parliaments to this group. To compensate for this shortcoming, the Speaker of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb, proposed establishing a “parliamentary reflection group”. This idea was than later taken up by the Conference of Speakers, which created the reflection group on 19 April 1995.
Two agenda points concerned the role of national parliaments in the EU. The first dealt with the application of Declaration 13 of the Maastricht Treaty; the other attempted to raise a debate on the future role of national parliaments in the EU with a view to the preparations for the 1996 IGC. Another topic raised at the meeting was the campaign against fraud in the EU.
The French National Assembly and Senate once again launched the idea of adding a European Second Chamber composed of national parliamentarians to the institutional framework of the EU. Their proposal was that this Second Chamber should be competent in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). The French Senate, which was the originator of the proposal, argued that the national parliaments should be more closely associated to the decision-making process of the EU. But the French proposal of creating a Second Chamber did not receive much support from other national parliaments, with a clear majority of delegations against the idea.
There was a proposal to create a COSAC secretariat, in order to allow an intensification of the cooperation between national parliaments, but no agreement could be reached.
The conference also included an exchange of views on the different scrutiny procedures in place in national parliaments. Delegations agreed that there was a need for an improvement of the transmission of EU proposals and other documents to the competent committees of national parliaments, in particular those concerning CFSP and JHA.
- Agenda
- Conclusions of the presidency (in French)
- Questionnaires sent to all National Parliaments on the application of the Declaration 13 of the Treaty of European Union with respect to the National Parliaments, and on the work achieved by the National Parliaments with respect to the institutional reform of 1996 (in French)
- List of Participants