MEETING OF THE IPEX BOARD Brussels, 21st October 2016 MINUTES (Version 18 November 2016) Venue: European Parliament, PHS 1C047, 11.0016.00 Participants: A complete list of participants can be found in Annex 1. No remarks were made by the participants concerning the list of participants. Chair: Ms Tania Tennina, Mr. Yves Carl, Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies. 1. Welcome The chair welcomed all participants, in particular those who participated for the first time in a Board meeting. 2. Adoption of the Agenda The agenda was adopted with one amendment adding a presentation of the Working Group on the use of fora under point 7 of the agenda. 3. Approval of the Minutes of the IPEX Board meeting on 1 July 2016 Pursuant to article 6.4 of the Rules of the Procedure and after the reception of some proposals for amendments to the draft Minutes sent out on 15th July 2016, the chair decided to submit them for formal approval to the Board. The amended Minutes were adopted by the Board. 4. Presentation of the URBIS Project by Mr François Renuit Mr François Renuit of the Foresight & Innovation Team of the cabinet of the Secretary General of the European Parliament presented the newly launched URBIS (Unified Repository base on Implementation studies) platform. In his intervention, Mr Renuit underlined that URBIS was intended to support the European Parliament s own consultation phase and to allow Members of the European Parliament to be informed on how existing legislation was delivering in practice, particularly at regional
and local level. Other contributions may originate from cities or from economic and social partners. The orator emphasised that URBIS was focussing more on the prelegislative phase and on reports or studies related to the Commission s Annual Work Programme highlighting that overleaps with IPEX would occur very seldomly. Although national Parliaments were invited to share information, the reports or studies to be uploaded on URBIS would be different from the contributions made to IPEX. Mr Renuit explained that URBIS featured at the moment 350 studies or reports from a very wide range of authors. An exchange of views with the members of the Board took place, at the end of which the question arose whether URBIS should include a link to the IPEX website. Some members of the Board suggested that the Secretary General of the European Parliament could inform the Secretaries General of the National Parliaments on the newly launched URBIS platform. The members of the Board agreed to further analyse this question. 5. Composition of the IPEX Board The chair explained that following the UK decision to not assume the Council presidency in the second half of 2017, the Council decided to bring forward by 6 months the order of presidencies and adopted a revised order in which the Member States would hold the presidency of the Council of the EU. This revised order of the presidencies, which specifies that Estonia is going to take over the presidency of the EU Council in the second semester 2017 also has an impact on the composition of the IPEX Board as Estonia became an ex officio Member of the IPEX Board. By a letter of September 30th, the Estonian Parliament responded to the Luxembourg Presidency acknowledging their membership in the IPEX Board and nominated a member. The Board adopted the new composition of the Board. A list of the members of the Board is attached to the Minutes in Annex 2. 6. IPEX Promotion Leaflet: presentation of the new layout and exchange of views Following the decision of the last Board meeting, a new draft version of the layout had been distributed to the Board members. The chair explained that the main adaptation visàvis the first draft concerned the pictures and the IPEX symbols. More pictures of the IPEX website have been added and a more corporate branding was used.
The Board members agreed to use this new layout for all the Parliaments/Chambers but asked the chair to make some more adjustments to the design of the leaflet. The chair took notice of this decision and agreed to send around a modified version of the leaflet to be adopted by written procedure. 7. Working groups state of play The Board was informed on the state of play in the Working Groups (WG). WG on fora The Chair reminded the participants that the Board had asked the WG to submit a final report containing some recommendations based on the findings. The WG had prepared a report which was submitted to the members of the Board before the meeting. The final version of the report will be forwarded as soon as possible. After a discussion concerning the removal of the link to the fora related to legislative dossiers from the public site, the Board decided to follow the proposal of the WG on fora and to remove the link. The Board expressed the opinion that this removal represented no major development of IPEX but rather a question of visibility and insisted that the possibility to use the fora still existed. WG on the digital strategy (DS)1 The chair informed the Board members that the work on the digital strategy and the work programme was progressing while taking into account the comments and requests raised during the last meeting of the IPEX Board. Besides the work on both documents, the WG had decided to draft a questionnaire on the DS to be submitted to the National Correspondents (NCs) in order to collect their opinion on the matter. The feedback from the NCs will be used to complete the draft final version of the DS document, which would then be submitted for approval to the next Board meeting in January. The Board gave its consent to the approach suggested by the WG consisting in a consultation of the NCs via a questionnaire. The Board agreed that Mrs Külli Kapper from the Estonian Riigikogu joined the WG on digital strategy. WG on contact with EU institutions As Austria will take over the IPEX chair in 2019, it was also suggested after the meeting that M. Katharina STOURZH would join the WG on DS. 1
Mr Calin Racoti announced that all national Parliaments/Chambers had set up their ECAS account, which is the first step to implement etrustex transmission system for official documents to national Parliaments. Mr Thomas FICH of the European Commission confirmed the progresses made and underlined the good cooperation between his institution and the national Parliaments. He informed participants that about 20 national Parliaments/Chambers had given their consent to cut off the transmission of documents via email, and that this parallel transmission would continue for the Parliaments/Chambers who haven t completely switched to etrustex. Some members of the Board made the remark that the parallel transmission via email should continue, since for technical reasons (i.e. updates) it was not always possible to use etrustex and they wanted to make sure to get all the documents. WG on the organization of the correspondents meeting The chair informed that the Working group had met in Luxembourg on 30th September and submitted a draft programme for the NCs meeting. The first day of the meeting would consist in two trainings, one for the newcomers and the second for the more experienced correspondents. On the second day, the NCs would discuss on two subjects in particular: IPEX as a facilitator for the Exchange of Parliamentary Information and First experiences with etrustex. Testimony by correspondents. The main topics would also be dealt with by the two workshops. Two more presentations on the handbook and the leaflet were going to follow during the plenary session. In response to a question related to updating the glossary, it was decided to send an email to the NCs in order to ask whether they wanted to propose any modification or update to the glossary. The Board also had an exchange of views on the question whether the report of the NCs needed to be submitted to them before publication. It was underlined that the reports on the NCs meeting were drafted by the organising Parliament without the need to submit the reports to every National Correspondent. 8. Financing IPEX information officer (IO) The chair sent a letter regarding the cofinancing of the IO for the period 20172018 to all the national Parliaments/Chambers end of July. So far, 28 Parliaments/Chambers indicated in a letter of intent that they would join the cofinancing scheme. The quorum of 15 Chambers for the commitment has been reached. Subsequently, the chair asked the Belgian Senate to take action in order to prolong the contract of the IPEX IO. 9. IPEX Calendar
The chair highlighted the upcoming meetings: 1 and 2 December 2016: IPEX Correspondents Meeting in Luxembourg 27 January 2017: IPEX Board meeting in Luxembourg The incoming Slovak Presidency indicated that they were planning to hold the next Secretary Generals meeting on 2021st February 2017 and the Speakers Conference on 2425th April. The exact dates of the Board meetings under Slovak presidency will be submitted to the January Board meeting. 10.Any other business Mr FAJTAK explained that the preparations for the IPEX presidency had started and that he was looking forward to welcome the members of the IPEX Board in Slovakia.