Timmermans accepts lunch date to discuss Commission work programme

EU ministers meeting in Brussels are expected to discuss ways to oblige the Commission to consult the European Council when preparing its annual work programme.

The European Union’s General Affairs Council (GAC) has extended a lunch invitation to Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice-president, in the hope of starting a discussion about ways to formalise the GAC’s input into the Commission’s annual work programme.

The Commission has confirmed that Timmermans will join the European affairs ministers of the 28 EU member states next Tuesday (17 March), at what will be an otherwise routine monthly meeting.

EU officials say the purpose of the lunch is to discuss the prospect of establishing an inter-institutional agreement regulating the preparation of the work programme – a key moment of the Commission’s planning schedule. The 2015 work programme put forward by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, was prepared in the midst of confirmation hearings for newly-appointed commissioners, and while the Commission says it did consult the GAC on that occasion, member states would like the process to be formalised with an agreement involving both the GAC and the European Parliament.

Although the GAC has a year to put this agreement in place, it wants to avoid being sidelined when, at the end of the year, the Commission’s 2016 programme is being prepared.

The discussion may provide ministers with some relief ahead of the scheduled afternoon discussion on the 2015 European Semester, the first phase of the EU annual cycle of economic policy in which the European Commission analyses the fiscal and structural reform policies of member states. The second phase of the cycle, known as the National Semester, is when member states implement the policies they have agreed. The morning has been earmarked for last-minute drafting of resolutions which leaders attending the European Council summit on 19-20 March will sign up to.