The progress achieved by the European Union. Report 1995

Parliament adopted the report by Mr José Luis VALVERDE (PPE, E) on the report of the European Council on the progress achieved by the European Union in 1995. It regretted deeply that the Council text was merely a formal enumeration of the activities undertaken during the year. As the European Council was not the same institution as the Council of the European Union its report should in future include a political assessment of the progress achieved and the problems which have arisen. The report deplored a step backward in the implementation of the CFSP 'especially as the Union was particularly active in the external field'. The common positions and joint actions were fewer in number and less substantial than in 1994. The report also drew attention to the main objectives which Parliament had set in areas such as employment, action to combat fraud, transparency, citizenship, the third pillar or simplification of the legislative procedures, which should be reduced to codecision, assent and consultation. Parliament reaffirmed the need to extend the scope of the codecision procedure to all legislative acts. In general the co-decision procedure was working well and promisingly, even though this procedure should be improved and simplified, without modifying its nature. With regard to the IGC, Parliament regretted that it had not been granted observer status and deplored the lack of goodwill thus far manifested by the negotiators. It reaffirmed that there could be no enlargement without far-reaching institutional reform of the Union and categorically rejected any attempt to defer what was really at stake in the IGC until a subsequent reform. �