Overzicht van de belangrijkste wetgevende handelingen van het Tsjechisch Voorzitterschap (en)

One of the foremost duties of the Presidency is the search for compromise wordings of new EU legislation acceptable to the Member States and, where co-decision applies, also to the Council and the European Parliament. The legislative procedure of the European Union being a continuous process, a number of legislative proposals in different stages of the adoption procedure were handed over to the Czech Presidency by the French Presidency.

The first version of The most important legislative acts settled during the Czech Presidency (as of 31 May 2009) contains exclusively an overview of legislation, the final wording of which was reached during the Czech Presidency, although some of these texts will be formally adopted only in the coming six months of the Swedish Presidency. This is also why the list does not include legislation that was settled during the preceding Presidencies and only given the formal seal of approval by the Council in the first half of 2009.

In the process of negotiating new Community legislation, the Presidency plays a crucial role since it seeks to harmonise the stances of the EU Member States and, in cases where the co-decision procedure is concerned, the positions of the Council as such and the European Parliament. During talks on acts governed by co-decision, the Presidency represents the Council in special meetings known as trialogues, in which it has to reach agreement with the European Parliament on the final wording of legislative texts. Trialogues are also attended by the European Commission as the sponsor of the text in question. The Presidency then has to defend the agreement in the Council from which it received the mandate for negotiating with the Parliament. Until the end of the term of office of the European Parliament, the Czech Presidency struck deals on 50 legislative acts adopted by co-decision.

In addition to this, the Czech Presidency has so far reached agreement on 17 other legislative proposals negotiated under the consultation procedure, where the Council is not obliged to take account of the opinion of the European Parliament. A number of other proposals being currently discussed in the Council, agreement on approximately ten more legislative acts can be expected to be reached by the end of June. Finally, there are many pieces of legislation on which decision is taken exclusively by the Council without consulting the European Parliament.

The most important legislative acts settled during the Czech Presidency (pdf, 106 kB)