The 24th COSAC in Stockholm on 20-22 May 2001 was dominated by discussions on the future of the EU. The decision of the Nice IGC to launch a wider and more in depth debate on the future development of Europe, with a view to agreeing a new round of reforms at an IGC in 2004, triggered a lot of interest.
The Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Göran Persson, addressed COSAC and encouraged it to contribute to the discussions on the debate on the future of Europe. National parliaments were, however, split on that question and so COSAC could not adopt a position. Despite this, COSAC agreed on reiterating its criticism of the functioning of the Amsterdam protocol’s provisions on transmission of documents to national parliaments, which it considered had not been fully implemented. COSAC noted that the protocol had not specified whether it was the Commission or the Member State governments who were responsible for forwarding consultation documents to national parliaments. COSAC therefore called on the two institutions to clarify the division of responsibility.
As regards the way in which national parliaments should be involved in the debate of the future of Europe, the Stockholm COSAC suggested two possibilities: via COSAC or via assembling a convention composed of national parliamentarians and European Parliamentarians, government representatives and representatives from the Commission.