Many EU priority proposals pending

After the blog post Commission Work Programme 2018 looked at the CWP 2018 communication, the entry New and REFIT initiatives in Commission Work Programme 2018 glanced at the first two annexes, with ordinary legislative and political initiatives plus future of Europe proposals in the first annex, and REFIT   proposals in the second annex, but widening through a new communication on better regulation, an accompanying SWD(2017) 675 and a fresh REFIT Scoreboard.

Here we look at the priority proposals still pending.

Priority pending proposals

There was the Joint Declaration on the EU’s legislative priorities for 2017 conferring priority status on 58 proposals, but slow progress caused my choice of headline 22 September 2017 to State of the Union: legislative worries. I am not less worried now.

A month later we get this 14-page compilations of 66 pending proposal packages, all told:

Annex to the CWP 2018 communication; Strasbourg, 24.10.2017 COM(2017) 650 final ANNEX 3

If brevity is the soul of wit, the Annex III infographic should be commended for condensing the 66 pending proposal packages into just two pages.

Withdrawals and repeals

Withdrawal from the EU seems to be  the only process and Article 50 TEU the only provision in the EU treaties of interest among English mass circulation tabloids (and consequently, of what many people in Europe and America read about the European Union nowadays). Any other EU stories in these tabloids seem to support the purpose of creating horror images of the European Union in order to keep Leavers happy, despite their foolish decision and the government’s disastrous handling of Brexit.

However, we encounter the term ‘withdrawals’ in another context. The fourth annex of the Commission Work Programme for 2018 is:    

Annex to the CWP 2018 communication; Strasbourg, 24.10.2017 COM(2017) 650 final ANNEX 4

On five pages 15 planned withdrawals are presented, many of the proposals obsolete.  

The fifth annex adds a list of three superfluous proposals to be repealed:

Annex to the CWP 2018 communication; Strasbourg, 24.10.2017 COM(2017) 650 final ANNEX 5

Via the legal portal Eur-Lex with COM(2017) 650 as your reference, or the web page 2018 Commission work programme - key documents, you can look out for possible new language versions of the CWP 2018 documents. The #FutureOfEurope hashtag on Twitter yields an occasional gem for interested EU citizens.

Ralf Grahn