The 32nd COSAC in The Hague on 22-23 November 2004 was primarily taken up with deliberations on the Constitutional Treaty, which had been signed on 18-19 June by the Member State governments. The key item for discussion at the COSAC meeting was again the “subsidiarity early warning mechanism”.
The Dutch Parliament had already decided how to organise its national subsidiarity check. It had opted to establish a special “Joint Subsidiarity Committee”, comprising members of both Houses of the Dutch Parliament. An exchange of views and information took place on the basis of a report drawn up by the Dutch Presidency as well as the second biannual report produced by the COSAC secretariat, which had asked national parliaments how they would organise their subsidiarity checks. At the time, only a few parliaments had a clear picture of this. In order to facilitate debate and allow national parliaments to reflect further on this issue, COSAC agreed to conduct a “pilot project”, which would allow national parliaments to test how their subsidiarity early warning mechanisms might work in practice, by examining a specific piece of draft EU legislation. It was agreed that the Commission’s 3rd Railway Package would be the subject for this pilot project.
Finally, and despite lengthy discussions, COSAC could not reach agreement on introducing a new language regime.
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Ordinary meeting of the XXXII COSAC
21-23 November 2004
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Meeting of the Chairpersons and the Troika
13 September 2004