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LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY - Milestone documents - Current Practice (3rd column)
Milestones
Documents
Current Practice1
Receipt of
Commission proposal
COM adopts its proposal and makes it public.
proposal
CONS receives the proposal and publishes it as a public ST document.
Discussion in
Agendas
WP agendas are issued as public CM documents.
Working
Party/COREPER
State of Play/Progress
Progress Reports are generally LIMITE documents when they go to Coreper, though this is not always the
report
case (e.g. 10519/17).
Other reports submit ed to the WP are generally LIMITE.
Debate in
Report / Note to
Al documents placed on a Council agenda are public documents.
Council
Council/COREPER
Documents going to COREPER are generally LIMITE documents. They are public documents if they are
destined for Coreper and Council together i.e. no changes are expected at Coreper.
Council mandate (General
Generally speaking, the Council mandate can take two forms:
approach)(basis for starting
trilogues)
(1)
GA: public once placed on a Council agenda
(2)
CRP mandate: since it is a document destined for CRP it is generally LIMITE, but there are cases in
which it is already public at Coreper. Example of the latter: document 10345/18.
However, there are also some cases in which it is the
WP which gives the negotiating mandate
(example: Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine 2018/0058 COD, see doc. 9228/18 LIMITE).
Trilogues
Agenda & calendar
The
agenda is generally not considered by the Council as an official document. It is only circulated via
email to participants in the trilogue meeting, but not to delegations.
As regards the
calendar and scheduling of trilogues, the forthcoming trilogue dates (next 2-3-4 trilogues)
for a given file are usually pre-agreed between the Secretariats (upon confirmation of availability at the
1 N.b.: This table covers only documents relating to legislative files. The handling of documents relating to non-legislative files may differ.
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political level). There may not however be a concrete document specifying these dates, and if there is one
it is not considered an official one.
Within the Council, delegations are informed of forthcoming trilogue dates via the WP and Coreper (the
CRP1 practice recently having been started in CRP2 as well).
List of participants (name of The
list of participants of a trilogue is not considered a document by the Council. It is not made public. It
Ministers & Perm Reps)
is circulated to participants via email, but not to delegations.
There is no rule as to whether such a list of participants has to exist. The Secretariat of the hosting
institution (EP or GSC) may or may not elaborate such a list. Some EP commit ees do not systematically
send lists of participants. Furthermore, the actual participants may yet vary slightly from those listed.
4 Column-Table or basis for See also below 'outcome of trilogues'.
trilogue
The
practice here is extremely varied, depending on the file and policy field (as well as the negotiating
strategy).
The 4 Column-Table can be distributed to delegations as an ST LIMITE document (e.g. ST 8143/18), a WK
document (e.g. WK 13846/17) or via email (simple Word document).
The document distributed may contain the full 4 Column-Table or only the relevant parts
It should be noted that within the EP, the (latest) 4-column table is not made generally available to al
MEPs
4 Column-Table or (partial) The
practice here is extremely varied, depending on the file and policy field (as well as the negotiating
outcome of trilogue
strategy).
The 4 Column-Table can be distributed to delegations as an ST LIMITE document (e.g. ST 8143/18), a WK
document (e.g. WK 13846/17) or via email (simple Word document).
The document distributed may contain the full 4 Column-Table or only the relevant parts
It should be noted that within the EP, the (latest) 4-column table is not made generally available to al
MEPs.
Final trilogue
Consolidated text (4th
The 'analysis/confirmation of the final compromise text' is generally an ST LIMITE document sent to
column)
Coreper. But there are also examples of it being public (14846/17, 15849/17, 9296/18).
It should be however noted that once it comes on the agenda of a meeting of the responsible EP
committee for a vote, it becomes public.
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Offer letter to EP
The Offer Letter is not an ST document, it is a PCY letter following endorsement by Coreper of the
provisional agreement.
Adoption
PE-CONS document
The PE-CONS document is a public document.
Approval or non-approval of The text adopted by the EP is public.
EP position at 1st reading
The corresponding Council document taking up that text for transmission to the Council for adoption is
public.
Council position at first
This document is public.
reading
Statement of reasons
This is a public document.
Approval or non-approval of This is a public document.
EP amendments at second
reading
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