Belgian Presidency of the European Union
Parliamentary Activities
Welcome Address
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Danny Pieters
President of the Senate |
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André Flahaut
President of the House of representatives |
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From 1 July to 31 December 2010, Belgium will hold the presidency of the European Union for the twelfth time. This presidency will take place in the context of a close cooperation with two other member States: Spain and Hungary. In order to strengthen the parliamentary dimension of the presidency, we have signed, on 5 November 2008, a cooperation agreement with our colleagues from the Spanish and Hungarian Parliaments.
The aim of this trio presidency, which covers a period of 18 months (a formula introduced by the Council of the European Union in September 2006), is to reinforce the continuity of the European action and the coherence of the conducted policies. The Belgian presidency is part of a permanent decision-making process. However, this does not prevent each presidency from elaborating its own programme in which a series of priorities are emphasized.
The Parliament of the country holding the European Presidency plays, of course, an important role. This evolution takes place in the light of the greater role played by the national parliaments in the European integration process and the new powers granted to them by the Treaty of Lisbon.
In order to adequately prepare the Belgian presidency at parliamentary level, the House of Representatives and the Senate have organized a series of hearings with members of the Belgian government. In doing so, each minister was heard during a joint meeting of the federal Advisory Committee on European Affairs and the specialized standing committees of both House and Senate, in order to discuss the priorities of the Belgian presidency. The results of these debates have allowed us to determine the parliamentary activities that will be organized by the Belgian Federal Parliament. Employment and growth will certainly be priorities of our presidency in the perspective of the implementation of the new Europe-2020 strategy.
Since the beginning of the nineties, we have noticed a continuous reinforcement of the cooperation between the national Parliaments of the European Union. Indeed, interparliamentary cooperation is necessary to ensure a democratic foothold of Europe by allowing the European integration to be built on solid parliamentary grounds. In this context, a great number of interparliamentary meetings will take place in the House of Representatives and the Senate during our presidency. On 25 and 26 October 2010, COSAC (the Conference of Committees specialized in European Affairs) will bring together more than 300 people at the Egmont Palace. The different Chairpersons of standing Committees (Foreign Affairs, Finance, Social Affairs and Renewal of Society, Infrastructure and Equal opportunities between Men and Women) will also meet in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Various interparliamentary meetings with the European Parliament will also be organized. For details on those meetings we refer to his website entirely dedicated to the parliamentary activities of the Belgian presidency.
We hope the above mentioned meetings will be fruitful to all those who take part in them as we are convinced that these debates constitute a most useful contribution to the development of the parliamentary dimension in Europe.
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Danny Pieters
President of the Senate |
André Flahaut
President of the House of representatives |
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Date last modified 18/08/2010
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