Increasing opportunities to frustrate EU legislation is not the answer to Europe’s challenges. This is the reaction from Socialists and Democrats as the ‘Venezuela majority’ endorsed a PfE authored report on the EU legislative process during the European Parliament’s Plenary in Strasbourg today.

The EPP, ECR, PfE and ESN groups overwhelmingly voted together to back the report on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality and the role of national parliaments in the EU legislative process. The AFCO file calls for strengthened mechanisms for national parliaments to object to EU legislation, questioning the entire EU legislative process and one of the key foundations of the European institutional set-up. The report was voted without a plenary debate, despite S&Ds pushing to add a debate to Parliament’s agenda.

The S&Ds, Renew, Greens and the Left had together proposed an alternative text reaffirming subsidiarity as multilevel governance that enables effective EU action on transnational challenges. This alterative text stressed the positive added value of EU action and focused on enhancing democratic legitimacy, inclusiveness and transparency – bringing parliaments and citizens closer to EU laws.

S&D shadow rapporteur on the file, Kristian Vigenin, said:

“Putting this report in the hands of a far-right group which favours renationalisation of European policies was a mistake from the beginning. The fact that the EPP would go along with this is worrying. It throws into question the credibility of their claim to only actively work with ‘pro-European’ parties. 

“Right from committee stage, we joined with Renew, the Greens and the Left to reject the PfE text. We even proposed an alternative report because we wanted to avoid any confrontational tone and emphasis the positive potential of a multi-level approach, with local, regional, national and EU authorities working together to address challenges. Instead, the report endorsed today repeats tired attacks on the EU legislative process. As a Parliament, we should be able to do better than this. We need to be cooperative and forward-looking, supporting a more effective, citizen-focused EU."

Among other topics, the PfE report highlights ‘weak legal foundation for certain EU legislative initiatives’ and advocates for shifting of the legislative weight to lower levels of government and stronger tools for national parliaments to object to EU legislation. It also launches an unprecedented political attack against the Court of Justice of the European Union for its ‘reluctance to enforce subsidiarity’.