Conciliation Committee

The rules for conciliation committees can now be found in Art. 294 TFEU in the Lisbon Treaty. Old rules on common decision making is changed to the Ordinary Legilslative Procedure. but may still be called the co-decision procedure in practise.

Under the co-decision procedure a conciliation committee is set up when the Council cannot accept proposed amendments from the European Parliament.

The committee is composed of 27 representatives from the member states and 27 from the European Parliament, appointed between groups bon the basis of the d`Hondt rule.

Most meaningful negotiations take place in a so-called `trialogue` meeting between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the European Parliament.

Notes

- In 2008 a conciliation committee was only set up once, in 2007 6 times, in 2006 10 times and on no occasion in 2005

- Conciliation is also used in the budget procedure when a delegation from the European Parliament meets with a delegation from the Council to negotiate a compromise.

- The EU Constitution working group on simplification feared that in an enlarged EU there may be too many representatives on conciliation committees and so it proposed a lower number of representatives. This proposal was criticised because it would mean that many nation states would not be represented when laws were finally decided behind closed doors in a conciliation committee.

Links

Conciliation and codecision http://www.europarl.eu.int/code/default_en.htm