European Parliament: Questions to the Council

The previous blog post looked at the rules when the Council is heard by the European Parliament. The “silence procedure” laid down in Article 12(2) of the Council’s Rules of Procedure was also presented.

This post adds a few remarks on questions by MEPs to the Council. (The internal EP rules have been discussed earlier.)


A fresh practical example (in French) is Council document 7290/09 from the Council Secretariat to Coreper with references to draft answers by the Council to written questions by MEPs:



http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/fr/09/st07/st07290.fr09.pdf


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Questions and answers


For a view of various types of questions by members of the European Parliament to the Council (and the Commission) you can go to the European Parliament’s web page Parliamentary questions:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/QP-WEB/home.jsp?language=en



If you choose Written questions – Questions with answers, you gain an insight into how the Council replies, but first and foremost how much more popular questions to the Commission are. I encountered the first question with answer from the Council on page 18:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sidesSearch/sipadeMapUrl.do?PROG=WQ&L=EN&SORT_ORDER=D&REF_WQ=2009-*&F_REF_WQ=*/2009&WITH_ANSWER=Y



Ralf Grahn