Letters

MEPs and the crucial role of rapporteurs

A vital legislative function

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott

The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.

Mon Jun 10 2024 - 00:12

Sir, – MEPs seeking re-election may announce that they have been “rapporteurs” for this or that dossier. I sometimes feel sorry for them. They put this claim on their website and in their press releases, but in many cases their constituents have no idea what it means. “What is it you were? A rapporteur? That’s nice,” is the most common response, if there is a response. Yet service as a rapporteur is one of the most important contributions an MEP can make to the work of the parliament.

The job of a rapporteur is to steer legislation through the European Parliament in much the same way as a minister steers legislation through a national parliament, but the rapporteur does not have a government department for support or a governing majority.

Rapporteurs take a proposal from the commission, and analyse it with a small team of assistants. Proposals can be extremely technical – as is often the case with chemicals, tax, medicines, financial regulation, and so on. They may have to seek expert help, but rapporteurs remain responsible for preparing a report and drafting amendments for a parliament committee.

Rapporteurs from other political groups (“shadow rapporteurs”) propose their own amendments and the main rapporteur has to consult with the shadows in the hope of reaching agreement. Ultimately the committee votes up or down on the amendments. Later there is a vote in the full parliament where again the rapporteur has to negotiate with the other political groups to seek agreement, or majority support, for the rapporteur’s favoured amendments.

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The council (27 governments) will have their own views on the proposal and the parliament, council, and commission usually have to get together in a “trilogue” to reach agreement on a final text.

The rapporteur leads the negotiations for the parliament, based on an agreed mandate.

Given the importance of rapporteurs, they are a magnet for many of the 20,000 or so lobbyists based in Brussels (and in the rapporteur’s home country).

Around 100 or more representatives of pharmaceutical companies have access passes to the European Parliament, with far greater numbers back in their offices and in consultancies acting on their behalf.

In setting the agenda for the parliament on a given dossier, rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs have far more power and responsibility than members of national parliaments. The more complex the issue the harder their task.

Sadly, some rapporteurs simply let an industry group write their reports, saving themselves time and thought.

This did not happen in 2014 when Glenys Wilmot (UK) was the rapporteur for the Clinical Trials Directive, now governing clinical trials throughout the EU. The proposal itself ran to 107 pages, plus 127 pages of impact assessments.

Her first report ran to 52 pages with 74 amendments, but a total of 731 amendments were submitted to the main committee voting on the proposal. Her task was to decide which amendments to back, not just on the basis of what was good, but on what was possible in negotiations with her fellow MEPs, and with the council, and commission.

She did not get all she wanted, and I would have liked to have seen more on academic and post-marketing trials, but the final text is potentially a great advance for transparency, and more than I believed to be possible a year earlier.

Rapporteurs matter. – Yours, etc,

JIM MURRAY,

Brussels.

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