Olivier Chastel gives more details about meetings with the European Commission and the European Parliament in the run-up to the Belgian EU Presidency
At a meeting of the Council of Ministers, State Secretary for European Affairs Olivier Chastel presented an overview of the next few meetings between the Belgian government and the European institutions.
The traditional meeting between the European Commission and the incoming Presidency is scheduled for Friday, 2 July. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and all the European commissioners will attend that meeting, which “will be split into two parts”, Olivier Chastel said, “a plenary session on an underlying theme of the Presidency and thematic sessions to do with the Belgian programme”.
The dates of the traditional meetings between the future Belgian Presidency and the main political groups in the European Parliament were also set. The dates of meetings with the other groups will be confirmed shortly, but for Olivier Chastel that first official contact with the three largest political groups (EPP, ALDE and S&D) in the European Parliament is extremely important.
The Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament will also pay a visit to the Belgian government. Its members will include President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek, Parliament’s Secretary-General Klaus Welle and his deputy, and the chairmen of the seven political groups in the European Parliament. Olivier Chastel explained to his fellow ministers that the Conference of Presidents would meet representatives of Belgium’s civil society in July. “We also propose to organise a meeting between the Conference of Presidents and the newly elected federal parliament”, Chastel added.
Early on in the Presidency, (during the week of 12 July) the ministers presiding over a Council formation will present the Presidency programme to MEPs in the European Parliament and then answer their questions in the respective European Parliament committees.
Olivier Chastel went on to say that “the aim of these visits by representatives of the European Parliament and European Commission is to shore up the joint efforts made by these two institutions and the rotating Presidency. These meetings will also provide an opportunity to run through the priorities set out in the work programme of the Presidency and discuss the political and legislative agenda of each institution”.
This joint meeting of Belgium’s governments gave Belgian politicians their first chance to examine the preliminary version of their country’s EU programme with a view to preparing for the work to be done in the weeks to come. Depending on what the Spanish Presidency manages to accomplish, the Prime Minister will present the programme to the European Parliament on 7 July.