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European Council: June 2006

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which on the whole I welcome. I was pleased to see that the Statement referred approvingly to paragraphs 37 and 38 of the presidency conclusions, concerning the involvement of national parliaments in the community’s policy-making processes—in particular, the Commission’s own,"““commitment to make all new proposals and consultation papers directly available to national parliaments””," which is very welcome, and inviting national parliaments to react,"““to improve the process of policy formulation””." I am, however, a little disappointed by the weakness of language in the presidency conclusions that:"““The Commission is asked to duly consider comments by national parliaments””." At our recent COSAC in Vienna we strongly emphasised that the Commission would need to provide a considered response in a reasonable timeframe, which was in fact taken up by the Austrian presidency. The Commission would do well to ““consider””, but there is not much point in considering what national parliaments say if it does not actually respond to them. Therefore I ask Her Majesty’s Government, through the Minister, whether they would insist that the Commission take that seriously. Otherwise, it will too easily slide off the hook and make mere anodyne comments without due consideration, or even within that reasonable timeframe.