What will the Parliament do now?

The first reading of a proposed new directive has several necessary stages within the European Parliament.  First it is referred to a particular committee for consideration and the committee appoints one of its members to be a rapporteur.  The rapporteur prepares a report highlighting what needs changing in the proposed text, then the committee debates and votes on the report and proposed amendments.  The resulting report and proposed amendments then go to the full parliament in plenary session, where they are debated and voted on again.  Since the committees only meet once a month and it can take two or three months for the rapporteur to prepare their report, this process takes, on average, just under a year.

Currently, there are only five more meetings of the committees before the parliament suspends proceedings in April for the run up to the June elections, so it is impossible to complete the first reading before then.  There is no point in only doing part of a first reading as about one third of the MEPs will change after the election and committee membership can change even more.

So, it is unclear exactly what the parliament will do now with the proposal for a new directive on animal experimentation.  It is certain to be referred to the Environment Committee, as they have dealt with everything on this subject before now.  However, it is quite possible that the Research Committee will put in a bid for the proposal to be considered jointly by both committees.  The committee or committees are unlikely to appoint a rapporteur immediately.  They may decide to hold a preliminary debate or even public hearings.    We will learn more in the next few weeks.

One thing is clear.  The formal legislative process within the parliament will not start until the second half of the year.