Decision on amendments to Parliament’s Rules of Procedure implementing the parliamentary reform “Parliament 2024”

The European Parliament adopted by 429 votes to 148, with 47 abstentions, a decision on amendments to Parliament’s Rules of Procedure implementing the parliamentary reform “Parliament 2024”.

The Decision implements the recommendations by the Parliamentary reform group “Parliament 2024”, as endorsed by the Conference of Presidents (EP President Metsola and political group chairs) in December 2023.

The reforms will improve Parliament’s functioning as a co-legislator, arm of the budgetary authority, and discharge authority, as well as increase its capacity to exercise democratic oversight and hold the other institutions, particularly the Commission, accountable. Improvements to plenary sessions are also included.

The reforms should, inter alia:

- improve cooperation between committees by simplifying working methods in order to drastically reduce conflicts of competence;

- check whether a proposal meets the applicable legal conditions. The President may refer the proposal to the committee responsible for legal affairs for an opinion on the appropriateness of the legal basis, which should be delivered without undue delay;

- implement accelerated legislative procedures should be carried out on the basis of a report from the committee or committees responsible. To this end, questions to be dealt with in accordance with accelerated legislative procedures may be given priority over other items on the committee agenda;

- establish a new referral procedure will allow for Commission proposals to be attributed in a more straightforward manner: the Conference of Presidents will now also have the possibility to propose to plenary to set up a temporary legislative committee to deal with especially broad crosscutting legislative proposals that would otherwise involve more than three committees, which would make the legislative process very difficult to handle;

- provide that the committee responsible should set a reasonable deadline by which the opinion-giving committees must deliver an opinion if it is to be taken into account by the committee responsible;

- include a proper review of the urgent procedure, limiting it to exceptional and strictly necessary cases only;

- create, as regards the budget and discharge, a stronger link between MEPs' work on legislation and the EU budget, thus ensuring that Parliament's political priorities are backed up with the right amount of money;

- allow the committee responsible for budgetary issues may provide the committee responsible for the subject-matter with an opinion on the potential financial implications of the proposal;

- ensure that all the legislative proposals with an impact on the EU budget will from now on undergo a budgetary assessment: in the budgetary assessment, the committee responsible for budgetary issues should examine whether the proposal for a legally binding act provides for sufficient financial and human resources, and evaluate the potential impact of the financing proposed on other Union programmes or policies. It should also determine whether the proposal is compatible with the multiannual financial framework, the system of own resources.