The scope for action of European Parliament negotiators in the legislative process: lessons of the past and for the future

The European Constitution dramatically expands the areas subject to the co-decision legislative procedure. The paper considers the potential consequences of this expansion for the ability of the Parliament as a whole to exercise control over individual members who negotiate with Council to look for agreement on legislative outputs. It looks back at the recent record of the Parliament, comparing the room for manoeuvre of its negotiators in the third and final conciliation phase of codecision with the earlier stages of the procedure. It takes as its starting point the claim in the literature that going to conciliation poses a risk for parent legislative bodies. They may lose their legislative power by delegating responsibility for solving disputes to a small number of influential negotiators. The paper argues that in fact conciliation in the EU has not proved a risky strategy for the Parliament: However, the lack of formal rules at first and second reading in co-decision increases the risk of loss of control. Hence the importance of observing the mechanisms developed by the Parliament to deal with this risk as the potential for more agreements being reached at an earlier stage of the procedure increases with the approach of the ratification of the Constitution