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Aligning a number of legal acts with the TFEU (Article 290, Commission delegated powers)

2013/0218(COD)

The Committee on Legal Affairs adopted the report by József SZÁJER (EPP, HU) on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council adapting to Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union a number of legal acts providing for the use of the regulatory procedure with scrutiny (RPS).

At the time of adopting Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council on comitology, the Commission undertook to assess by the end of 2012 the legislative acts containing references to RPS that remained in force, in order to prepare the appropriate legislative initiatives to complete the adaptation to the new legal framework. The overall objective was that, by the end of the 7th term of the Parliament, all provisions referring to the regulatory procedure with scrutiny would have been removed from all legislative instruments.

In keeping with that statement and further to the screening of existing legislation, the Commission put forward three proposals for a regulation adapting to Article 290 TFEU a number of legal acts providing for the use of the regulatory procedure with scrutiny (RPS). (Please see 2013/0220(COD) and 2013/0365(COD)).

This report is related to a proposal covering 160 legislative acts in various policy areas. The Rapporteur proposed to the relevant committees that the three proposals should be regarded as a package, subject to the same timetable and adopted as soon as possible, so that the alignment exercise can be completed, ideally, by the end of the current legislative term. The report contains a limited number of amendments that were suggested by the specialised committees in their opinions.

The committee’s amendments propose that the power to adopt delegated acts should be conferred on the Commission for a period of five years from the date of entry into force of the regulation (and not for an indeterminate period). The delegation of power shall be tacitly extended for periods of an identical duration, unless the European Parliament or the Council opposes such extension not later than three months before the end of each period.

Owing to the highly technical and complex nature of the delegated acts in the remit of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the report proposes that the time limit for objections to the act should be three months, extendable by a further three months at the initiative of the European Parliament or of the Council.