The Committee on Legal Affairs adopted the own-initiative report by Heidi HAUTALA (Greens/EFA, FI) following the annual report of 2014 on monitoring the application of Union law.
Members stressed the Commission’s essential role in overseeing the application of EU law. They called on the Commission to continue its active role in developing various tools to improve EU law implementation, in the Member States, and to provide data, in addition to that on the implementation of EU directives, on implementation of EU regulations in its next annual report.
Role of Parliament and stakeholders: while recalling that the role of monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of EU law lies with the Commission, Members acknowledged that Parliament also has a crucial role to play in this regard by exercising political oversight of the Commission’s enforcement actions. They suggested that it could contribute further to the timely and accurate transposition of EU legislation by sharing its expertise in the legislative decision-making process through pre-established links with national parliaments.
The report also stressed the important role of the social partners, civil society organisations and other stakeholders in creating legislation and in monitoring and reporting shortcomings in the transposition and application of EU law by the Member States. It called on the European institutions to agree on more suitable timetables for the implementation of regulations and directives, whereby due account is taken of necessary scrutiny and consultation periods.
Candidate countries: Members felt that Parliament itself should play a stronger role in the analysis of how accession countries and countries with association agreements with the European Union comply with EU law, and provide those countries with suitable assistance.
More transparency: the report noted that the increase in the number of new EU Pilot files during the period under examination, and the decrease in the number of open infringement cases, show that the EU Pilot system has proved its usefulness, and has had a positive impact. It reiterated, however, that the enforcement of EU law is neither sufficiently transparent nor subject to any real control by the complainants and the interested parties. Members regretted that, despite repeated requests, Parliament still has inadequate access to information about the EU Pilot procedure and pending cases.
Pointing out that sincere cooperation between the Commission and Parliament is an obligation incumbent on them both, Members called for the Framework Agreement on Relations between the European Parliament and the European Commission to be revised so as to enable information about EU Pilot procedures to be supplied in the form of a (confidential) document to the parliamentary committee responsible.
In this context, the report also underlined that the Committee on Legal Affairs has set up a new Working Group on Administrative Law, which could be a source of inspiration for the Commission, to show that a regulation on the administrative procedure of the Union’s administration would be both useful and feasible to enact.
The Commission was asked to present a legislative proposal on a European law of administrative procedure and to make compliance with EU law a real political priority, to be pursued in close collaboration with Parliament.