The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs unanimously adopted, at second reading, the report by Inger SEGELSTRÖM (PES, SE) approving the Council common position for adopting a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing for the period 2007-2013 the specific programme "Drug prevention and information" as part of the General programme "Fundamental Rights and Justice".
The main point of controversy following first reading had been the Council's reluctance to accept Parliament's amendments on committee procedure (comitology), in particular with regard to deciding on annual priorities.
However, the Council decided to apply the agreement reached between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission on comitology in the case of the specific programme "Civil Justice" (see COD/2005/0040) to the specific programme "Drugs prevention and information", and amended its draft common position accordingly. As the common position therefore now incorporated an amendment comparable to the one adopted by Parliament on 11 July 2007 with regard to the "Civil Justice" specific programme, the committee proposed to approve the Council common position as soon as possible in order to ensure the timely launch of the specific programme "Drugs prevention and information".
In the legislative resolution approving the common position, the committee called for the Commission to confirm its commitment to "transmit directly to the Chair of the competent parliamentary committee (LIBE) the draft annual programme and to inform the European Parliament without delay about any modification being made to it".