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Consolidated legislation
Consolidation consists of incorporating into a single text, with no official authenticity, a basic instrument (a Treaty or piece of Community legislation) and the amendments and corrections subsequently made to it. A consolidated version of the Treaty establishing the European Community is available in EUR-Lex.
All the secondary legislation in force has been consolidated and can be consulted in EUR-Lex. These texts are intended to be used purely for documentation purposes, and the institutions do not accept any liability for their content.
On the basis of consolidated texts, the Commission may undertake a legislative consolidation or recasting. Legislative consolidation consists of getting the consolidated text, with a certain amount of redrafting, adopted through a legislative procedure. The new text is then published in the Official Journal as a legislative instrument and becomes authentic.
The Commission can also take the initiative of recasting a text where it considers it necessary to thoroughly overhaul the legislation in a particular field. In that case it launches a new legislative procedure.
Preparatory material
Introduction
Preparatory material comprises all the documents issued by the institutions in connection with a legislative procedure. Also included in this category are some documents of more general significance. The main documents that are considered to form part of the preparatory material are explained below.
Preparatory act
1.5.2.1. Legislative proposals and opinions from the Commission
The Commission has a near-monopoly in initiating Community instruments (directives, regulations, decisions or international agreements), except where it shares this right with the Member States or the European Central Bank. The treaties almost always require the Council to take decisions on the basis of proposals from the Commission. However, the Council can invite the Commission to draw up a proposal, as can the European Parliament.
At any point in the procedure the Commission can amend its proposal or, if necessary, withdraw it.
The Commission is again involved in a later stage of the legislative procedure. Once the Commission’s proposal has been transmitted to the European Parliament and the Council, point (c) of the second subparagraph of Article 251(2) lays down that, if Parliament proposes amendments to the common position adopted by the Council, the amended text is forwarded to the Council and to the Commission, which delivers an opinion on those amendments. If the Commission is not in favour of the amendments proposed by Parliament, the Council must act unanimously; if it is in favour, the Council may act by a qualified majority.
1.5.2.2. Member States’ initiative
The Treaty of Amsterdam provided for the Member States to have a right of initiative on questions of asylum and immigration. For a period of five years the legislative right of initiative was thus shared between the Commission and the Member States, either party being able to put forward proposals independently of the other. This transitional period of five years ended on 1 May 2004, and the Member States now have a right of initiative only for the second and third pillars, i.e. in the fields of foreign and security policy and police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
1.5.2.3. Council common position
A common position is an instrument adopted by qualified majority by the Member States meeting within the Council as part of a legislative procedure in which the Council shares its decision-making power with the European Parliament (cooperation procedure or co-decision procedure). It expresses the Council’s position on a Commission proposal in the light of the opinion of the European Parliament (see European Parliament’s legislative resolution) and the opinions of the other institutions and bodies involved in the procedure (European Economic and Social Committee, Committee of the Regions, European Central Bank, Court of Auditors).
1.5.2.4. European Parliament’s legislative resolution
The European Parliament is involved in a number of stages in any legislative procedure (cooperation procedure and co-decision procedure): the documents adopted by Parliament at each stage in the procedure are generally resolutions and may contain instruments of various types, such as opinions or amendments to the Council’s common position. Legislative procedures are referred, depending on the subject matter, to a Parliamentary committee, which prepares a report containing a draft resolution for adoption by Parliament in plenary session.
1.5.2.5. Opinions of the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions
The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions give technical opinions on questions concerning regional policy and economic and social policy respectively. Opinions are given either on a Committee’s own initiative or at the request of Parliament, the Council or the Commission and serve to guide these institutions in their legislative activity. It is sometimes mandatory to consult the European Economic and Social Committee and/or the Committee of the Regions, but their opinions are not binding.