Dear all,
A fascinating matter indeed! I am currently doing a research project including many of these texts as well; let me just give you a few of my findings/impressions. A vast majority of new legislation is agreed in trilogues behind closed doors, after which a tripartite compromise is entered into the formal legislative process by the EP (after which the Council naturally agrees instantly). Current estimates are that about 80% of new legislation sees the light this way, for the remaining 20% attempts of a trilogue compromise are made but fail (and hence a second reading is necessary).
Documents relating to the institutions' preferences are available in the form of, of course, the Commission proposal and the EP rapporteur's draft report (available through OEIL), but Council documents of this kind are not publicly available. Internally, there are a vast number of Coreper mandates, presidency non-papers, presidency compromise proposals et cetera, but it is hard to discern any standard operating procedure other than that at some point Coreper needs to issue a mandate (in whatever form). For the sake of a clear overview of the institutions' positions, they circulate so-called 4-column-documents amongst each other outlining their positions.
The good news is that in principle, all these Council documents and 4 column documents are available upon request after a final legislative act has been adopted.
The bad news is:
- that some negotiations are so simple that no 4 column documents are produced;
- that there is no finite set of documents produced within the Council; hence it is hard to know for certain if one is actually documenting the full legislative process
- that the Council's online document register shows a lot of entries, but it is not possible to see if the registered documents are the ones you are after
- that requesting larger numbers of documents (say, 15+), may easily take a couple of months for the Council to process.
Good luck, and best wishes,
Gijs Jan Brandsma
________________________________________
Van: Help for librarians and others providing EU information. [[log in to unmask]] namens Ian Thomson [[log in to unmask]]
Verzonden: donderdag 7 november 2013 14:10
Aan: [log in to unmask]
Onderwerp: Re: Council compromise texts
Dear Rob / Patrick
I think Patrick and yourself have painted an accurate picture of what a Council compromise text is - on the Council Register of Documents you can quite often come across documents from the current Presidency country which are drafts of a compromise text (ie, a compromise of the differing interests of the Member States). What is interesting is how in reality the majority of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (previously called co-decision and incidentally twenty years old this year) never go to a second or even third reading (conciliation) because the Commission, Council and Parliament have behind the scenes negotiated an agreed text (trilogue or trialogue). This is done in the name of efficiency but not necessarily transparency - PreLex and OEIL are useful tools but you get no sense of the 'real' negotiations from those two sources. The Council and EP Registers do help somewhat but not in any systematic way. Challenging but endlessly fascinating!
Best wishes
Ian
Ian Thomson
Executive Editor, European Sources Online [ http://www.europeansources.info<http://www.europeansources.info/> ]
Director, European Documentation Centre, Cardiff University [http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/edc ]
Information Consultant, Wales Enterprise Europe Network
President, European Information Association
Contact details:
European Documentation Centre
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Tel: +44-(0)29-2087-4717
Email: [log in to unmask]
From: "Overy, Patrick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask],
Date: 07/11/2013 12:28
Subject: Re: Council compromise texts
Sent by: "Help for librarians and others providing EU information." <[log in to unmask]>
________________________________
Dear Rob,
As far as I can see, Council compromise texts are part of the legislative procedure as a stage in brokering agreement between Parliament, Commission and Council.
The dossier on PreLex http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/detail_dossier_real.cfm?CL=en&DosId=202775
lists all official documents but doesn’t include these yet
I think the next stage is a Common position, if a compromise is reached but I can claim no expertise.
Hope this helps - any corrections from better informed eurotalkers are welcome!
Best wishes
Patrick Overy (EDC Exeter)
-----Original Message-----
From: Help for librarians and others providing EU information. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Turner
Sent: 07 11 2013 11:32
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Council compromise texts
Dear all,
We’re tracking the progress of the draft directive on Rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the EU, dossier 2013/0185 COD.
The Council has produced two compromise texts, which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/kohloag. I have been asked what a Council compromise text is, how it is used, and how it might affect the Parliament committee vote coming up on 5th December.
I have not come across such documents before and cannot find a specific reference to Council compromise texts in any of the books we hold or the various online guides to EU legislative procedure. From my reading I get the idea that a compromise text is produced by the Presidency when trying to create a compromise between the various national interests that can be used as the basis of discussion in Council pending the forwarding to the Council of the Parliament response to the legislative proposal. If this is the case, then it would be independent of and have no influence on the committee vote, and would also not be an official Council response to the legislative proposal.
Does anybody know if am I close to the mark in this, or have a good working understanding of Council compromise texts? Any help you are able to give would be most appreciated.
Many thanks,
Rob
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