Next Wednesday 5 November the Committee on
the Environment (ENV) of the European Parliament (EP) will consider the draft Recommendation on the draft Council Decision concerning the accession of the
European Union (EU) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). In a few simple words, the Committee will discuss if it agrees with the accession of the EU to
CITES following the entry into force of the Gaborone
Amendment.
Taking advantage of this event and knowing
how complicated the EU mechanisms may be, I decided to try to break it down.
What is the Gaborone amendment?
Article XXI of the CITES Convention opens the floor for accession
indefinitely. At COP2, an amendment was adopted
so that regional economic integration organizations would also be able to
accede. However,
citing CITES website:
‘it only entered into force on 29 November
2013, 60 days after 54 (two-thirds) of the 80 States that were party
to CITES on 30 April 1983 deposited their instrument of acceptance of the
amendment...’
This amendment allows the EU, an organisation constituted by 28
sovereign States which has competence to negotiate, conclude and implement
international agreements, to become a full member of the Convention and
exercise the corresponding rights and obligations within the limits of its
attributed competences. To date, the EU has been an observer.
Highly complex and controversial, I will leave aside the whole story of
the EU competences. For those who are interested, I recommend this Brief by
ClientEarth on the powers to negotiate on behalf the EU.
So, does the EU intend to accede CITES? The
quick answer is ‘Yes’ provided that the internal mechanisms of decision taking
allow for it, or in other words, if everybody agrees on the terms and
conditions of such accession.
How does the internal procedure work?
The EU’s principles, rules and structure
are established in two texts which could be considered (by some at least) as
the equivalent of a Constitution: The Treaty of the EU and the Treaty on the Functioning
of the EU. They establish among others the competences of the EU and
the institutions that will develop them. For more information, again I recommend
to read this article by my friend Marta Ballesteros about the Lisbon Treaty from an environmental perspective.
For
the purposes of understanding the issue, I believe the only thing to consider
is that the Treaties establish a procedure in which different EU institutions
play important roles. Following a chronological order, what has happened with
the accession is the following:
In this case, the proposal for a Decision
to accede CITES must originate from the European Commission. On 6 December
2013, the European Commission published a proposal for the EU accession to CITES (COM
(2013) 867 final). This proposal was sent for adoption to the Council of the
EU.
The Council is composed of 28
representatives of the 28 member States of the EU. In this formation, they meet
regularly to discuss, amend and adopt legal texts. In this case, the Council
adopted the Draft Council Decision on 3 June 2014
approving the accession on behalf of the EU.
The document is still a draft because the
Council must look for the consent of the European Parliament (EP) before it
becomes final.
To complicate things, the EP itself has its
own internal procedures. What will happen on Wednesday is a first discussion within
the Committee on the Environment. To facilitate it, a rapporteur, Ms. Pilar Ayuso,
has prepared a draft Recommendation available already online.
Once discussed, the recommendation will
have to be voted first by the Committee, then sent to the Plenary, discussed
and voted again before it can go back to the Council.
For the convenience of potential readers I
have included hyperlinks to the available documents. I have also
omitted the references to the articles to avoid a legalistic text.
Despite the interesting point of selection of legal basis raised by the EP’s Legal
Affairs Committee, many questions on how this accession is going to
be implemented are still open.
We will see if Wednesday’s brings any
discussion, but in any case, all looks well for the EU to accede CITES maybe
even before the end of the year.
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