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European Union (Amendment) Bill

What it tells us is that last year the German presidency took through a procedure for bringing the draft mandate before the intergovernmental conference, which, as the Foreign Affairs Committee said, was not sufficiently accountable to national Parliaments or to the European Parliament. That process was inadequate; it was not sufficiently transparent, and we said so in our report. That does not in any way negate my point, which concerns the need then, now and in the future for greater parliamentary accountability. The problem with Conservative Members' position is that they want greater parliamentary accountability in theory, but in practice, they would remove one of the legs of that process—accountability of the European Parliament.