Laws should be made in a transparent way and in a dialogue with the rest of society.
In the EU, lawmaking (directives) is supposed to meet such criteria: It often starts with a public consultation followed by a proposal from the European Commission. Member states are heard in the Council and the people’s elected representatives can amend and adopt or reject such proposals in the European Parliament. The Council and the Parliament will have to agree for a directive to be passed. A proposal can be rejected up to three times in the Parliament before it has to be withdrawn by the Commission. (It can then be re-written or withdrawn altogether.)
This is a slow process. And that is a good thing. Laws should not be rushed trough.
But the EU is an inpatient organization. Often there are special interests pushing for a directive, pressure from abroad or some other hidden agendas pushing the legislative dossiers.
So the EU is using an instrument called trialogues to speed things up. These are not supported in the treaty of the European Union. They are just… used.
The purpose of a trialogue is to speed up legislation. In this process representatives from the Commission, the Council and the Parliament hold meetings behind closed doors – negotiating for some sort of a compromise. The records are secret and often it is also a secret who attends these meetings. There is no transparency and no way to hold anyone accountable.
These trialogues are ever more common. Some years, there can be up to 700 of them. Today most legislative dossiers are exempted from the regular democratic process in the EU and settled in trialogues.
The result is that the public and the media is being kept away from the process. Civil society, activists and the academic world have no way to influence what is going on — not even if something is going terribly wrong.
Trialogues are especially common when it comes to matters concerning mass surveillance, copyright and telecommunications (such as Internet related issues). Here the power elite and special interests are particularly intent to avoid public scrutiny.
After a trialogue, the Council and the Parliament still will have to adopt or reject the proposal. But in general, it is always adopted by mildly embarrassed politicians — who know that there are back-room deals that should not be scrutinized too carefully.
When I used to work in the European Parliament, there was a joke that was too close to the truth for comfort: In the EU, first they decide. After that, there might be a discussion. And after that, in some cases people even might bother to find out the facts.
In the EU, the democratic process has been short-circuited.
/ HAX
Links:
• Civil society calls for reform of trialogues in a letter to EU Commission, Parliament and Council »
• Ombudsman opens investigation to promote transparency of “trilogues” »
• The Council challenges the right of the European Ombudsman to conduct an inquiry into secret “trilogues” (in which most EU legislation is decided) »
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