Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-13-Speech-2-270"
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"en.20030513.12.2-270"2
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"Mr President, as I have only two minutes, please allow me to combine what I have to say about the Regulation and the directive, as I have essentially the same things to say about each of them.
What happened with the European Limited Company has happened in exactly the same way with the European Cooperative Society; the Council of Ministers has, quite out of hand, robbed us of our power of codecision. This is something that we must not tolerate. There is little doubt that the majority on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market takes the view that, this time, we should appeal to the Court of Justice against the choice of the legal basis. My original agreement with Mrs Gebhardt was that the Committee on Legal Affairs would restrict itself to amendments on the legal basis.
We now have an array of amendments to vote on, both to the Regulation and to the directive. I gather that the Commission intends to support the amendments to the directive, whilst rejecting those to the Regulation. I take the same view. The legal issue is, however, a topic of great importance in terms of the future, for one cannot exclude the possibility of the Council of Ministers doing the same thing in other areas of company law – the other types of company are waiting to be dealt with. As far as the Regulation is concerned, we share the view expressed by the Commission, that Article 95 is the proper legal basis. We have already heard that a number of times, but, with reference to the directive on the involvement of employees, I would like to go into further detail. Article 137 (1) (e) is the rule on jurisdiction for informing and consulting employees and provides for no exception to the co-determination procedure in Article 251. Article 137 (1) (f), however, is the rule on jurisdiction for employee participation; it requires a unanimous vote in the Council, with Parliament merely being required to be consulted. In this instance, however, the Council can decide by unanimous vote to apply the codecision procedure. This directive treats both objectives – co-determination and consultation – equally. It is my contention that, in a situation like this, where there are two equivalent legal bases alongside each other, option is downgraded to obligation and the Council’s discretion is correspondingly limited. If this were not so, the requirement for unanimity in the Council as regards the one legal basis would nullify the codecision procedure in its equivalent counterpart. Such a curtailment of the European Parliament’s rights as a legislature enjoying democratic legitimacy is unacceptable.
An appeal will not put the European Cooperative Society at risk. Firstly, the validity of the Cooperative Society Regulation is coupled to the expiry of the time limit for the transposition of the directive. This period should in fact allow sufficient leeway for the ECJ to hand down a clarificatory ruling. Secondly, the ECJ can be asked to rule that the Regulation and the directive continue to have legal effect. Quite deliberately, then, it is the choice of legal basis that is being contested, not the subject-matter of either the Regulation or the directive."@en1
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