POST-MAASTRICHT LEGILSATIVE PROCEDURES: IS THE COUNCIL "INSTITUTIONALLY CHALLENGED "? summary of a paper presented

With the Maastricht Treaty now almost two years in operation the institutional system is changing and explanations of how the system works will have to change as well. The Treaty gave rise to a number of fundamental challenges to the Council as an institution. The paper will focus in particular on the "codecision " procedure laid down in Article 189b of the EC Treaty, but sets the operation of this new decision-making procedure in the context of a whole series of challenges for the Council which arose from the Maastricht Treaty and its difficult process of ratification. It shows how this procedure built on the existing cooperation procedure, giving the Parliament the power to reject legislation and obliging the Council to negotiate with it in a "Conciliation Committee" which recalls similar institutions in bicameral legislatures in certain federal systems. The paper will describe how the procedure has operated since its inception by using case studies and statistics. It explains how the institutions have tried to adapt to the new demands placed on them by the procedure. To conclude, the paper gives an overview of the shortcomings of the procedure and summarises proposals for reform which are circulating in view of the Inter-governmental Conference to be convened in 1996. It will try to relate the proposals to the experiences of the different institutions with the operation of the procedure and look at ways in which it could be simplified