On 23 January 2015 the EU Council published a document entitled “Rules of Procedure of the General Court of the European Union – Approval by the Council”.
The Council is now “invited to approve the Rules of Procedure of the General Court as set out, after legal-linguistic revision, in document 16894/14 JUR 955 COUR 58 INST 627, as an A-item in one of its next sessions”. The Council’s rules of procedure lay down that “the provisional agenda shall be divided into Part A and Part B. Items for which approval by the Council is possible without discussion shall be included in Part A, but this does not exclude the possibility of any member of the Council or of the Commission expressing an opinion at the time of the approval of these items and having statements included in the minutes”.
By way of background, the new Rules can only be adopted with the support of a Qualified Majority in the Council, save for the language provisions, which require unanimous Council support. Despite the UK’s objections in December 2014, the Presidency concluded that a qualified majority existed and that the revised Rules of Procedure would be adopted by the Council in early 2015. The UK asked the Latvian Presidency to postpone this until the UK completed Parliamentary scrutiny. The European Scrutiny Committee met on 14 January 2015 and cleared the document from scrutiny, “given that the draft Rules are now likely to command a qualified majority and the Government propose to abstain”.
