Codecision procedure Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

The Codecision procedure is one of the legislative procedures of the European Union. For example, it is used as the legislative process for most directives.

Basically it works by the European Commission issuing a proposal for a legislative text, but it cannot enter into force before the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union did agree to a common version of the text.

This starts the 1st stage of the process, which is called 1st reading.

If this procedure is used for a directive, the text which is negotiated is issues by the Commission is also called directive proposal or draft directive.

Table of contents

1 1st reading 2 2nd reading 3 conciliation 4 3rd reading 5 Comments 6 external links

1st reading

Formally, the first organisation which has to act on the text is the European Parliament. The text is sent to the relevant Committees of the European Parliament which discuss the issue and give reports to the other Members of the parliament, which finally vote on the proposal in a Plenary session.

In the Parliament's 1st reading, the majority of the votes which are given are enough to decide this particular vote yes on adopting a motion, for example to adopt an amendment.

After the vote in the parliament, the Council of the European Union has its 1st reading on the basis of the text from the parliament.

It can do two things:

• Accept the text as voted in the parliament: This means the directive comes into effect as voted in the parliament.
• If it cannot agree with the parliament, it has to decide a common position between the member states. As this always is a compromise between the member states, this is also often referred to as compromise, as in principle, the councils should take the postion of the parliament into account in order to reach a consensus with the parliament.

2nd reading

After the Council of the European Union has sent its common position to the European Parliament, a time period of 3 months starts to run. If the Parliament does nothing within this time frame, the common position enters into force as directive.

The Parliament can extend this time by one month if it decides so.

If the European Parliament does not agree, is has to adopt changes to the common position or reject the common position, the latter would end the codecision procedure at this point.

To change or reject the text in 2nd reading, the parliament needs an absolute majority of the 732 Members for a yes on an amendment - for each change.

If the text is changed, the European Commission examines the changed of the European Parliament and to these changes, the Council later needs to have an unanimous vote to accept these changes.

The Commission sends this then to the 2nd reading in the Council of the European Union for decision.

Three possiblities:

• If all changes from the European Parliament are adoped by the Council, this text is adopted as directive and enters into force
• If the council rejects the text, this codections process ends, the proposal is withdrawn.
• If the council demands changes to the text, the conciliation phase starts

conciliation

For some time, representatives from the Council, the Commission and the Parliament meet in conciliation meetings and try to find a common text to which all cold agree upon.

Possiblities:

• If the consiliation committee does not come to a result, the proposal is withdrawn, the process ends.
• If the consiliation committee comes up with a text, this text goes into 3rd reading.

3rd reading

The outome of the conciliation is sent to Council and Parliament and if Council or Parliament reject this outcome, the proposal is withdrawn, otherwise it enters into force as directive.

Comments

The European Commission and the Council are the lobbying places of big mulitnational and american companies and their lobbying organisations (like the BSA, for example) while the Parliament is the "people's chamber" in this procedure.

This is also known as the "democratic deficit of the EU", for example between political scientists.

external links

• Article 251 of the Treaty establishing the European Communiy is the legally binding rule describing the codecision procedure.
• The Europarl's page on the Common Position handling contains all related articles.
• Detailed description from Xavier Druis
• The Council of the European Union's Codecision page which also links to its Co-decision Guide (as PDF) it contains a very comprehensive view from the viewpoint of the council
• A Colored Flowchart Poster can be freely downloaded in this area, in pdf or sxd format. (GPL licensed).

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