Signature of a cooperation agreement between the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions

Strasbourg, Wednesday 5 February 2014: Martin Schulz i, European Parliament president, Henri Malosse, European Economic and Social Committee president, andRamon Luis Valcárcel Siso i, Committee of the Regions president, today signed an important agreement between their three institutions. Faced with a need to do more to listen to the views of the European public, as set out in the Treaty of Lisbon, the three institutions wished to step up their cooperation and optimise their resources so as to ensure a quality response to what is happening on the ground and thus improve the effectiveness of legislation.

This cooperation agreement is founded on a key political component. In fact, the European Parliament is strengthening its cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions throughout the legislative procedure by ensuring better coordination of the work of the three institutions. Thus there will be cooperation upstream, with own-initiative opinions, and downstream, where the Committees will carry out assessments on the ground of the impact of European directives and programmes.

The agreement also has an administrative component: synergies will be created inter alia in translation, research and documentation services.

Anticipation, coordination and optimisation are the watchwords of this tripartite agreement, which comes into immediate effect once signed.

With the European elections a few months away, the cooperation agreement signed today also sends a positive signal to the people of Europe as regards optimum use of public money.