The plenary session from 22 to 25 April is the European Parliament’s last chance to conclude legislative business before the elections. Much remains to be done and lawmakers face a packed agenda with many votes on pending legislation over the coming days.
How many laws are still awaiting adoption? I updated my calculations – first introduced here and here – to examine where we are at and what progress legislators (Parliament and Council) made together over the last month.
The figures below cover only laws that moved/are still moving through the so-called Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). This is now the standard process to adopt new legislation.
Overall Picture
The Commission proposed 556 OLP files this mandate. This covers the time period from mid-2019 to now – the most recent legislative proposals (like one relaxing agricultural rules in response to farmers’ protests) arrived with Parliament only a few weeks ago.
Of the total, 337 have been agreed by both the European Parliament and the Council. The Commission withdrew 7 proposals. This leaves 212 files still moving through the legislative process, waiting to be completed.
Comparing these numbers with the March 2024 data (here) reveals some progress: A total of 17 files were adopted since then, but this is partly offset by the arrival of 13 new files.
File Progress
Delving deeper into the data reveals more significant developments: many pending files have advanced further through the legislative process, moving closer to adoption.
In particular, Parliament has already approved a large number of political agreements following trilogues with the Council and the Commission. These files, plus the ones that Parliament can adopt at its last plenary (see the substantial number of files where the committee responsible has confirmed the trilogue agreemend), can be adopted by Council between now and the reconstitution of Parliament after the elections.
Compare the new figure below to the previous one here. You will notice that many files have moved to more advanced stages of the process. (But note the change in colour scale – this was necessary to align the colours with the next figure below, which shows file progress across committees/policy areas.)
Progress across Parliament
It is also possible to show file progress across the (many) parliamentary committees. This reveals significant variation in the number of legislative initatives that each committee is responsible for and their success in shepherding their files through the legislative process.
You can compare this figure to the March one here. You will see that many pending files have advanced further through the process. The previous post also offers additional explanation of the differences across committees. (Again note the change in colour scheme to align colours across the new figures.)
Unfinished Business
Despite the final push at this plenary, it is clear – and entirely normal – that Parliament will not be able to complete work on all pending legislative initiatives. I explain here what happens to unfinished legislative work.
Fabian Bohnenberger 