Codecision procedure

The Codecision procedure is one of the of the European Union. For example, it's used as the legislative process for most directives.

Basically it works by the European Commission issuing a proposal for a legislative text, but it cannot enter into force before the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union did agree to a common version of the text.

This starts the 1st stage of the process, which is called 1st reading.

If this procedure is used for a directive, the text which is negotiated is issues by the Commission is also called directive proposal or draft directive.

1st reading

Formally, the first organisation which has to act on the text is the European Parliament. The text is sent to the relevant Committees of the European Parliament which discuss the issue and give reports to the other Members of the parliament, which finally vote on the proposal in a Members for a yes on an amendment - for each change.

If the text is changed, the European Commission examines the changed of the European Parliament and to these changes, the Council later needs to have an unanimous vote to accept these changes.

The Commission sends this then to the 2nd reading in the Council of the European Union for decision.

Three possiblities:

• If all changes from the European Parliament are adoped by the Council, this text is adopted as directive and enters into force
• If the council rejects the text, this codections process ends, the proposal is withdrawn.
• If the council demands changes to the text, the conciliation phase starts

conciliation

For some time, representatives from the Council, the Commission and the Parliament meet in conciliation meetings and try to find a common text to which all cold agree upon.

Possiblities:

• If the consiliation committee does not come to a result, the proposal is withdrawn, the process ends.
• If the consiliation committee comes up with a text, this text goes into 3rd reading.

3rd reading

The outome of the conciliation is sent to Council and Parliament and if Council or Parliament reject this outcome, the proposal is withdrawn, otherwise it enters into force as directive.

Comments

The European Commission and the Council are the lobbying places of big mulitnational and american companies and their lobbying organisations (like the BSA, for example) while the Parliament is the "people's chamber" in this procedure.

This is also known as the "democratic deficit of the EU", for example between political scientists.

external links

• is the legally binding rule describing the codecision procedure.
• The Europarl's page on the handling contains all related articles.
• which also links to it's (as PDF) it contains a very comprehensive view from the viewpoint of the council