Fabian Bohnenberger

It is crunch time for the EU system to agree new legislation before the upcoming elections. The many still ongoing trilogues – negotiations between the European Parliament, Council and the Commission on new legislation – need to conclude by mid-February to be able to adopt these laws by the end of the current mandate.

But European elections are in early June – why are negotiators facing a deadline now?

Getting agreements through Parliament

Legislators do not have until June because Parliament’s last chance to adopt new legislation is at its last plenary on 22-25 April. After this session, MEPs scatter to campaign for re-election.

In addition, provisional (trilogue) agreements on new legislation usually are translated into the 24 official languages and checked by lawyers before Parliament and then Council adopt them. Parliament allocates eight weeks for this process from the date on which the provisional agreement is confirmed.

You’ll notice that this is almost exactly the time period from now until the last plenary at the end of April – with a few extra days for safety and last-minute compromising.

Backlog in finalising texts for adoption

However, as everyone facing tight deadlines has experienced, things occasionally go wrong. The large number of files agreed over the last months has led to a (predictable) glut in provisional agreements for the lawyers and translators to finalise.

This means that even where Parliament and Council negotiators have found language they agree on, texts have not yet undergone the “legal-linguistic finalisation” for adoption.

The delay might barely raise eyebrows at normal times, but right before the elections, it is a problem: “Unfinished” legislative business – files on which Parliament has not yet adopted its position – lapses at the end of the term. I explain this here.

Translators and lawyer-linguist are thus under intense pressure to produce clean versions for adoption by Parliament. But – given the sheer number of complex files – some delays seem inevitable.

Corrigendum procedure to the rescue?

To deal with delays and any additional trilogue agreements over the coming weeks, Parliament is considering the use of one of its more obscure processes to buy time: the corrigendum procedure.

You’re excused for not knowing what I am talking about – it is literally the last issue addressed in Parliament’s long Rules of Procedure (Rule 241). The basic idea is to vote on the provisionally agreed version of the law, i.e., the one before legal-linguistic revision, and hope that any corrections can be waved through later by using a “corrigendum”.

There is precedent for employing this device at the end of previous terms to ensure that negotiation progress is not lost during the transition. For example, Parliament used the corrigendum procedure in 2019 to adopt (at first reading and without legal-linguistic revision) the Regulation on disclosures relating to sustainable investments and sustainability risks. Council – unaffected by the elections – waited until the next Parliament approved a corrigendum before it also adopted the law, thereby completing the legislative procedure.

But the risk is that corrigenda might face opposition in the new Parliament – be that because of disagreements with the proposed changes or political reasons.

System under pressure

The time pressure might thus still yield some last-minute compromises, but negotiators are rapidly running out of time.

Even the corrigendum procedure has its limits. Skipping legal checks can buy a few more weeks (potentially until mid-March) to conclude trilogues, but at the cost and added risks of approving the provisional agreement without legal checks.

At the latest, Parliament must adopt provisional agreements at its last plenary in April, which also requires the responsible parliamentary committee(s) to confirm the political agreement (see Rule 74(4) RoP).

So whatever choices are made, everyone involved will be in for some long hours and sleepless nights until the last plenary.