On 16 November, at the first meeting of the informal dialogue between a group of MEPs and the European Commission, we distributed a note on the basis of the 'state of play' document.
When the European Parliament imposed the budget reserve in November last year, it asked the Commission to ''modify the rules on expert groups'' regarding four different aspects. The Commission still hasn't explicitly committed itself to do that.
In their conclusions of the meeting with the Commission (5/9/2012) the MEPs noted: ''Since revising the horizontal rules themselves may prove to be a lengthy process, involving the entire college of the Commission, MEPs agreed that during the informal dialogue complementary ways may be explored, as long as the necessary changes and clarifications are being implemented by all DGs of the EC.''
In the process of the informal dialogue with the Commission, ALTER-EU believes the MEPs should agree with the Commission a set of new guidelines that should be included in a Memorandum of Understanding between the Parliament and the Commission. We have made some concrete proposals in the annex of our letter sent to MEPs on 4/9/2012. These guidelines should then be integrated in the horizontal rules on expert groups when those get revised (probably in 2015).
ALTER-EU has commented on the current situation in expert groups as presented by the Commission in its latest state of play (06/09/2012) and proposed concrete steps to improve the situation regarding the four conditions set by the Parliament during the first informal dialogue meeting between MEPs and the European Commission. For a full overview of our recommendation, see the attached note.
