Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 15 January 2020 - Strasbourg

Reform of the general principles of comitology (debate)

  Martin Hojsík (Renew). – Mr President, I think comitology is one of the amazing things about the European Union that no one understands, and we all talk about...

(Interjection from the floor: ‘I do!’)

– he does, but the public doesn’t! –

(Laughter)

and we talk about an EU close to the people, and that’s where we are missing out a lot. We also talk about transparency and accountability and this is something that this procedure is utterly lacking. Pesticides have been one of the hallmarks of the problems related to comitology. People don’t know how the governments voted, and what it ends up with is the general blame – Brussels decided, it’s a Brussels diktat – but at the end of the day, it’s the civil servants of the very Member States, of the very governments, who are there, taking the decisions, without public scrutiny.

I think this is something where we really need to change. I’m very happy to see that the Commission proposal is still on the table, but what we need now is really to start to get some movement in this House, but also with a renewed initiative from the Commission, so I hope that it’s going to end up on the work plan, but above all, from the Council, and maybe citizens need to step up their pressure.