EU Council’s Rules of Procedure

After the blog posts on Article 207 TEC and Article 240 TFEU, as well as on Swedish openness and the Lisbon Treaty, Information about EU Council: Swedish Presidency and first aid and Free EU Council publications, we turn to more detailed provisions.

While we are waiting for the Swedish EU Council Presidency to publish proposals for the new Rules of Procedure of the Council and other decisions concerning the implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon, we look at the existing Council’s Rules of Procedure.


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Council’s Rules of Procedure

Detailed rules on the Council of the European Union are given in Council Decision 2006/683/EC, Euratom of 15 September 2006 adopting the Council's Rules of Procedure, originally published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) 16.10.2006 L 285/47.



The latest consolidated version of the Council’s Rules of Procedure is of 1 January 2009.




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Contents

The headlines of the Articles and the Annexes offer a picture of the contents of the Council’s Rules of Procedure:



Article 1
Notice and venue of meetings

Article 2
Configurations of the Council, role of the General Affairs and External Relations Council and programming

Article 3
Agenda

Article 4
Representation of a Council member unable to attend

Article 5
Meetings

Article 6
Professional secrecy and production of documents in legal proceedings

Article 7
Cases where the Council acts in its legislative capacity

Article 8
Council deliberations open to the public and public debates

Article 9
Making public votes, explanations of votes and minutes

Article 10
Public access to Council documents

Article 11
Voting arrangements and quorum

Article 12
Ordinary written procedure and silence procedure

Article 13
Minutes

Article 14
Deliberations and decisions on the basis of documents and drafts drawn up in the languages provided for by the language rules in force

Article 15
Signing of acts

Article 16
Absence of the possibility to participate in the vote

Article 17
Publication of acts in the Official Journal

Article 18
Notification of acts

Article 19
Coreper, committees and working parties

Article 20
The Presidency and the businesslike conduct of discussions

Article 21
Reports from committees and working parties

Article 22
Quality of drafting

Article 23
The Secretary-General and the General Secretariat

Article 24
Security

Article 25
Duties as depositary of agreements and conventions

Article 26
Representation before the European Parliament

Article 27
Provisions concerning the form of acts

Article 28
Correspondence addressed to the Council


ANNEX I
LIST OF COUNCIL CONFIGURATIONS

ANNEX II
SPECIFIC PROVISIONS REGARDING PUBLIC ACCESS TO COUNCIL
DOCUMENTS

ANNEX III
DETAILED RULES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PROVISIONS
CONCERNING THE WEIGHTING OF VOTES IN THE COUNCIL

ANNEX IV
(1. In application of the following provisions of the Rules of Procedure and for
decisions in respect of which, under the Treaties, members of the Council or
of Coreper may not participate in the vote, account is not to be taken of votes
by such members:)

ANNEX V
WORKING METHODS FOR AN ENLARGED COUNCIL

ANNEX VI
PROVISIONS CONCERNING THE FORMS OF ACTS


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Next, we are going to turn to Coreper, then the General Secretariat and finally publications about the Council of the European Union.



Ralf Grahn

Information about EU Council: Swedish Presidency and first aid

For the intrepid ones, who want to follow the work of the Council of the European Union, the Swedish Council Presidency offers the best website to date, and you can sign up for a continuing stream of news. The web pages are available in English, French and Swedish.



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Council website

Presidencies come and go, but the Council remains. Long before the number of official languages rose to 23, the Council and the Court of Justice turned to an additional one to name their websites: Latin.

Thus, the web portal of the Council is Consilium and the homepage of the Court is called Curia.




The Council’s homepage is loaded with the latest news, such as conclusions by the Council configurations, but it also offers a number of thematic links or shortcuts to various policy areas.

Even if the Council produces about a hundred documents a day, one gets the feeling that final decisions are the strong point – after the fact.

The processes and real debates within the Council remain opaque, so it remains like a darkroom of old times. You find the Commission proposal, if there is one, and you see the final result, but despite deliberation in public the forces at work are hidden from public view, or they require dedicated research.


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First aid

Officially, the Council of the European Union is dedicated to openness.

As a first aid to students and others, who want to find documents or other information, the Council has published a leaflet with systematic information:

How to get information on the activities of the Council of the European Union (latest update January 2009).




The useful brochure offers brief information and links to the Council’s website, public deliberations and debates, news, access to public documents, enquiries about the Council and visits to the Council.



Ralf Grahn