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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Zusatz 138 – EP soll zwischen Demokratie und Niederlage ...
The opening meeting of the informal conciliation discussions between the Council and European Parliament (EP) has taken place. This process was largely brought about by the Parliament's overwhelming rejection of a "compromise" proposal with regard to the famous "amendment 138" text in May of this year.
The Council of Ministers' current proposal is for the Parliament to unconditionally overturn its current position and accept the text that it previously rejected.
As a result, the debate has become wider than "simply" the wording of one paragraph of a piece of telecoms legislation. Instead, it is now a question of the credibility of the Parliament as an institution and as a truly equal partner in the legislative process. Consequently, the parliamentarians in the Conciliation Committee are faced with a very stark choice between a defeat, whose consequences for the Parliament will extend far beyond the telecom package, or defending the democratic choices it has already made:
Defeat
Parliamentarians can choose to accept the Council's text. If they do so:
1. This will establish a new benchmark for inter-institutional negotiations, suggesting that any Parliament vote of any size on any dossier is vulnerable to being abandoned at a later stage in the decision-making process. This can only serve to durably weaken the Parliament's negotiating credibility. 2. They are laying the Parliament open to the accusation that they were being pro-consumer before the elections and now betraying the trust of citizens by taking an opposite position after the elections. 3. They are giving up the mandate that the previous vote gave them to accept a Council position for which no coherent justification has ever been provided.
Democracy
On the other hand, the Parliament can demand that the Council (finally) explain its motives for opposing amendment 138, thereby fulfilling a key role that a parliament is supposed to play - demanding an adequate level of coherent and transparent decision-making from other institutions.
For the moment, the arguments being used by the Council vary from the obviously weak to the simply far-fetched. According to sources in the negotiations, the Council has suggested, for example, that it cannot allow consumers an unconditional right to a prior judgement by a judicial body because of the need to protect networks from attacks.
Telecoms Package - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_Package
List of MEPs on the Conciliation Committee
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/code/dossier/2009/2007_0247_telecom/memb...
(contribution from Joe McNamee - EDRi)