Nearly 100 MEPs from 11 countries appealed to Antonio Tajani, chairman of the European Parliament, not to take any further decisions related to work on the Mobility Package. MEPs believe that it is crucial to first review the legal expertise of the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO). Representatives of MEPs talk about legal chaos.
A request to add the Mobility Package to the agenda of the European Parliament for February will be submitted this Thursday, February 7 at the Conference of Presidents (President of the European Parliament and presiding officers of political groups). The request concerns the entire Mobility Package, although two of the three reports that make up the full document were recently rejected when voting in the Transport Commission.
1.5 years of work
At the moment, politicians are not even able to say with certainty what form will the rules rejected by the Commission take during the vote in EU Parliament. Unofficially, it is said that most probably these will be the original proposals created by the European Commission.
That would mean that a year and a half of work on the Mobility Package – when further corrections were added – would not be taken into account.
Of course, if there was a vote on the Mobility Package in the EU Parliament again, new corrections could be made. A representative of the MEP Kosma Złotowski notices in a conversation with Trans.INFO that this would mean going back to the starting point and ignoring any compromises worked out in the Transport Committee.
Is there an alternative?
Hence the idea of the letter mentioned above. 96 deputies from Poland, Hungary, Romania, Great Britain, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany want to convince Tajani not to act in haste and abstain from submitting the provisions that have already been voted on several times and rejected.
However, the rules of work in the European Parliament are so flexible that, if this Thursday the chairmen recognise that the Mobility Package has to be voted, it will happen.
The signatories of the letter, however, hope that it will be possible to block the proceedings and wait until AFCO analyses the law and finds out whether it is an alternative to voting in the EP. They argue that legislation taken in such an uncertain atmosphere and easily undermined will be questioned during subsequent work on the Mobility Package. And the mandate accepted in as they called it, legal chaos, will not be conducive to negotiations during Trilogue.
Photo: European Parliament