European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments May 30-31, 2006 Tallinn, Estonia

ECPRD - ACTIVITY REPORT

MARCH 2004 TO MARCH 2006

This document is available in English, French and German

It was drafted by Mr Wojciech Sawicki, Co-Director. The text was completed in April 2006.

Published jointly by the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The contents of this publication do not necessarily represent the official views of these institutions.

Contents

      1.       Contacts

      2.       Introduction by the Co-Directors

      3.       What is the ECPRD

      3.1.       How did it all start?

      3.2.       Who are the members?

      3.3.       How is the ECPRD run?

      3.4.       How is it financed?

      4.       Annual Programmes

      4.1.       ECPRD Programme 2004

      4.2.       ECPRD Programme 2005

      4.3.       ECPRD Programme 2006

      4.4.       ECPRD Draft Programme 2007

      5.       ECPRD Activities 2004-2006

      5.1.       General

      5.2.       The evolution of comparative requests

      5.3.       Seminars

      5.4.       Operation of the Working Groups

      5.5.       The Executive Committee

      5.6.       Correspondents and Deputy Correspondents

      5.7.       EUROVOC

      5.8.       Development of the IPEX project

      6.       Revision of the ECPRD Statutes

      7.       The ECPRD website

      8.       The ECPRD Net Fellows project

9. ECPRD publications

10.       Minutes of Meetings

      10.1.       Report on the meeting of the Secretaries-General of Parliaments, members of the ECPRD, Strasbourg - 19 May 2004

      10.2.       Report on the Annual Conference of ECPRD Correspondents, Berlin – 14-15 October 2004

      10.3.       Report on the Annual Conference of ECPRD Correspondents, Bucharest - 14 October 2005

Annex 1. Comparative requests in the years 2004 - 2005

      Annex 2. Attendance at ECPRD Seminars

      Annex 3. List of ECPRD Correspondents

      Annex 4. Statutes of the ECPRD – Draft by the Statutory Working Group

1.       Contacts

	EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT	PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE
Co-Director Address Telephone Fax E-mail Co-Secretary Address Telephone Fax E-mail	Mr Alain BARRAU (acting) European Parliament Rue Wiertz, 60 B-1047 BRUSSELS (+32) 2 284 23 83 (+32) 2 284 90 05 alain.barrau@europarl.europa.eu Mrs Hanneke Coppolecchia European Parliament Rue Wiertz, 60 B-1047 BRUSSELS (+322) 284 45 60 (+322) 284 90 05 johanna.coppolecchia@europarl.europa.eu	Mr Wojciech Sawicki Council of Europe Avenue de l'Europe F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX (+33) 388 41 36 30 (+33) 388 41 37 95 wojciech.sawicki@coe.int Mr Mario Heinrich Council of Europe Avenue de l'Europe F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX (+33) 388 41 20 97 (+33) 390 21 55 80 mario.heinrich@coe.int

ECPRD website: www.ecprd.org

      (as from June 2006: www.ecprd.europarl.europa.eu )

Members of the Executive Committee
Address Telephone Fax E-mail Address Telephone Fax E-mail Address Telephone Fax E-mail	Mr Alain BARRAU European Parliament Rue Wiertz, 60 B-1047 BRUSSELS (+32) 2 284 23 83 (+32) 2 284 90 05 alain.barrau@europarl.europa.eu Mr Alessandro Palanza Camera dei Deputati Piazza Montecitorio IT-00186 ROMA (+3906) 6760 9557 (+3906) 6760 9982 palanza_a@camera.it Mrs Natasa Glavnik Državni Zbor Šubičeva 4 SI-1000 LJUBLJANA (+3861) 478 97 30 (+3861) 478 98 64 natasa.glavnik@dz-rs.si	Mr Wojciech Sawicki Council of Europe Avenue de l'Europe F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX (+33) 388 41 36 30 (+33) 388 41 37 95 wojciech.sawicki@coe.int Mr Robert Clements House of Commons GB-LONDON SW1A 0AA (+4420) 7219 3033 (+4420) 7219 0815 clementsrc@parliament.uk Mr Borys Kolisnychenko (co-opted member) Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine 5 Hrushevskoho Str. KYIV-8 UKRAINE 01008 (+38044) 255 27 92 (+38044) 253 32 17 kolisnychenko@rada.gov.ua

Working Groups
ICT Working Group
Coordinator Address Telephone Fax E-mail	Mr Joao Viegas Abreu Assembleia da República Palácio de S. Bento P-1249-068 LISBOA (+351) 21 391 70 33 (+351) 21 396 74 39 joao.viegas@ar.parlamento.pt
Macroeconomic Research Working Group
Coordinator Address Telephone Fax E-mail	Mr Kjell Torbiörn Council of Europe Avenue de l'Europe F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX (+33) 388 41 21 20 (+33) 388 41 27 17 kjell.torbiorn@coe.int

ECPRD Office Management
Address Telephone Fax E-mail	Mrs Hanneke Coppolecchia European Parliament Rue Wiertz, 60 B-1047 BRUSSELS (+322) 284 45 60 (+322) 284 90 05 johanna.coppolecchia@europarl.europa.eu

2.       Introduction by the Co-Directors

      To reach the age of 29 is considered to mark the borderline between youth and maturity. This is why many people, as they go beyond that age will, in announcing their birthday, claim – tongue-in-cheek – that they are today “turning 29”.

      The ECPRD will in future have no reason for such compunction as it now turns a real 29, for its dynamic life so far would lead us to expect that it will continue to be young in spirit. Since its conception in 1977, the centre’s main aim has been to foster cooperation among parliaments of the European region – something which was dramatically accentuated by the events of 1989 and is becoming increasingly important with every passing year. Over the past decade there has been a spectacular rise in activities and a broadening of the range of subjects dealt with, going far beyond the original idea of the Centre’s serving as a focal point only for library and documentation purposes.

      2004 witnessed another historic development in post-Cold War European history, as ten new member states – eight of them once behind the now blissfully forgotten “iron curtain” – joined the European Union, bringing its membership to twenty-five. There can be no doubt as to the contribution this enlargement has made not only to the countries joining, but also to the former EU–15 and - this is often overlooked - to all those countries in western, central and eastern Europe which for various reasons do not belong to the EU. The ten new EU members have breathed a wind of change into the Union, while parliamentary contacts have intensified both as a result of this process and from the ongoing enlargement of the Council of Europe (Monaco became the 46^th member state of the Council of Europe in 2004). With the organisation’s present membership only Belarus is missing, due to the absence of a democratic regime in that country.

      Many of our parliamentary colleagues from the countries concerned have on numerous occasions reaffirmed how much they value the activities and network of the ECPRD as they adapt their parliaments to the new European reality. From an ECPRD with only fifteen EU member states, we have moved to one where nearly half of our forty-six participating countries form part of the EU. Of course, as far as the Council of Europe is concerned, it has nearly the same membership as the ECPRD. It remains to be seen how especially the EU enlargement will affect the ECPRD but there is no doubt it will. The same holds for the current difficulties of the European Union in ensuring ratification of its Constitutional Treaty, even though it will likely make it even more important for the ECPRD to improve cooperation and understanding between its various member parliaments - and beyond them among the citizens of Europe.

      The period under review (March 2004 – March 2006) has seen many activities begin and reach fruition, a total of ten seminars and two Conferences of Correspondents have been held, not counting the meetings of the Executive. The seminars in question were hosted by six EU countries, two CEEC parliaments and two by the European Parliament or the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Average attendance at these events was at the level of 52 – a slight decrease compared to previous periods (2000-2002: 54; 2002-2004: 64).

      Many participants have praised the quality of the conferences and have expressed particular satisfaction at the invitation of speakers from outside national parliaments. Their input and experience have certainly contributed to the liveliness of the discussions.

      The two ECPRD working groups have held highly successful conferences, making frequent use of expert speakers from universities, ministries, international organisations and private enterprises. More information about the activities of the working groups can be found under Section 5.4 in this report.

      As can be seen from the separate chapter on comparative studies, requests from parliaments on a wide range of subjects have increased considerably over the period. Many parliaments want better coordination between and implementation of these comparative requests and studies. Consequently, a number of alternative options were debated by the Conference of Correspondents and the Executive, culminating in the adoption of a set of ECPRD guidelines on studies and comparative questions in January 2004. The new guidelines have, together with an improved on screen introduction and tracking system, considerably facilitated the management of this particular activity.

      One major part of ECPRD activities over the past two years has been the preparation of revised statutes, an undertaking made necessary not only because the original statutes date back to 1996, but also due to the EU and Council of Europe enlargements previously mentioned. The reader will find more information about this under Section 6 in this report. Suffice it here to say that we believe that the statutes represent a considerable improvement on the original ones, in that they will strengthen the ECPRD’s ability to meet new challenges.

      On 1 January 2005, Dirk Toornstra left the function as ECPRD Co-Director he had held since 1996. Dirk - with his great dynamism, personal commitment and creativity - made a major contribution to the development of the ECPRD at a crucial time in its history and for this he was duly celebrated at the meeting of ECPRD Correspondents in Berlin in October 2004.

      Following a decision of the Secretary General of the European Parliament, the ECPRD Secretariat, based in Brussels at the European Parliament, has been transferred to the newly created Directorate for Relations with National Parliaments. Mr Bo Manderup Jensen, Director of this Directorate, thus succeeded Mr Dick Toornstra as ECPRD Co-Director, as from 1 January 2005.

      It was expected that the ECPRD - a network of exchange of information and documentation between national parliamentary services - would play a bigger role in the various forms of inter-parliamentary cooperation being coordinated in this new Directorate.

      As a consequence of this transfer, however, the year 2005 had to be considered as a transition year, with fewer activities than usual: the number of seminars and meetings was reduced, no publications were issued. On 16 January 2006 Mr Jensen was called on by the President of the European Commission, Mr José Manuel Barroso, to become his Adviser on Parliamentary Affairs and subsequently was replaced by Mr Alain Barrau, who is currently acting as a Co-Director on behalf of the European Parliament.

      In recent years the ECPRD has been an active partner in the IPEX project which was initiated by the EU Speakers to facilitate the parliamentary exchange of EU legislative matters. Up until now IPEX has been publicly accessible on the ECPRD website. More details regarding this initiative can be found in Section 5.8. It should be stressed that the IPEX project is an initiative running parallel to the ECPRD. Its methods and objectives are different (concentration on EU legislative matters) from those of the ECPRD. It addresses itself a different group of partners (twenty-five, while the ECPRD groups parliaments of forty-six Council of Europe member states).

      The ECPRD has always laid great store by transparency. Thus, the minutes of all its meetings are available to member parliaments both in hard copy and electronic form. The management structure is meant to be clear, straightforward and pragmatic, and focused on best practices and collegial assistance. The network that has been established over the last three decades is based on understanding and respect for different practices and traditions among parliaments, while emphasising the need for a strong parliamentary presence in the national and international arena.

      As Co-Directors we are proud of the collegial spirit of cooperation that prevails in the ECPRD and of the fact that there is no discrimination whatever between old and new, or large and small, parliamentary assemblies. However, we must not rest on our laurels but rather try to strengthen the role of parliaments in the political process, since parliamentary cooperation is essential as a counterweight to the growing dominance of executive agencies in an ever more global and institutionalised world.

      This activity report - including the suggested new statutes - has been drafted for the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments and Secretaries General to be held in Tallinn on 30 and 31 May 2006, and it is our hope that it will meet with their endorsement.

      Our work as Co-Directors has been made immeasurably easier and more agreeable by the energy and enthusiasm shown by our two Co-Secretaries, Hanneke Coppolecchia and Mario Heinrich, and by our office manager Dorne Jackson (until 31 December 2004). All of us, along with our colleagues in the Executive Committee, are confident that the ECPRD will be able to continue to make an ongoing contribution to a democratic, prosperous and peaceful Europe, in which parliaments can play their full and proper role.

Alain Barrau       Wojciech Sawicki

Acting Co-Director       Co-Director

European Parliament       Parliamentary Assembly of

      the Council of Europe

3.       What is the ECPRD?

      3.1.       How did it all start?

      The ECPRD was created in 1977 in Vienna by the Conference of Speakers of European Parliamentary Assemblies, which delegated to the Presidents of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe its formation and management. At its meeting in Madrid in 1980, the Conference expressed the desire that the ECPRD should work for and with all parliamentary assemblies and that national parliaments should authorise their services to participate actively in the activities of the Centre. The dramatic political events of 1989 in central and eastern Europe, combined with the information technology revolution, led to a period of rapid evolution which was reflected in the adoption of a new action programme for the Centre by the Conference in The Hague in 1994. The trend towards more interaction and greater reliance on cooperative organisations such as the ECPRD was amongst the subjects on the agenda at the meeting in Budapest in 1996, including the new Statutes and objectives of the Centre. The Conference in Stockholm in June 1998 confirmed the importance of the ECPRD in maintaining links between officials of national parliaments. Whereas the Conference in Strasbourg in May 2000 focused particularly on the use of new technologies to increase parliamentary cooperation, discussions between the Speakers of EU parliaments in Rome in September 2000 and subsequent meetings of the Secretaries-General in March and November 2001, highlighted the role which a strengthened ECPRD might play in the field of legislative cooperation on EU matters.

      This initiative developed in the ensuing years into a formal project called IPEX (interparliamentary exchange) at which an increasing number of EU parliaments participated. The IPEX project benefits from the structure of the ECPRD and particularly its website.

      At the Speakers' Conference and meeting of the Secretaries General of ECPRD parliaments which convened in Zagreb in May 2002, the overall mission of the Centre was reaffirmed and attention was drawn to the wide range of its activities. In fact it was deemed necessary to appoint Deputy-Correspondents for each parliament to increase the efficiency of the network.

      At the May 2004 Conference of Speakers and Secretaries General, the decision was taken to modify the ECPRD’s statute. This was deemed necessary because the existing statutes were the ones drawn up in 1996 and therefore in need of revision due to the “Big Bang” enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and the continuing enlargement over the years of the Council of Europe, which today has all of 46 member states. A more detailed account of the revision of the statues and their current appearance as a draft to be submitted for possible adoption by the meeting of Secretaries General to be held in Tallinn in May 2006 can be found in Section 6 and in Annex 4 to this report.

      3.2.       Who are the members?

      The European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Assembly of the Western European Union and all parliaments of member states or special guests at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe are members. For parliaments with two chambers, each chamber is a member in its own right.

      Parliaments outside Europe which wish to cooperate in the work of the Centre are also welcome. At present the Centre has 46 member countries and three guest or observer countries, together with three international parliaments. This results in 70 parliamentary assemblies which may participate in the activities of the ECPRD.

      3.3.       How is the ECPRD run?

      Each member assembly appoints a senior official to act as the correspondent for the assembly. The Correspondent is the privileged point of contact for the assembly and should thus have access to the Secretary General and must be in a position to coordinate the contribution of the officials of his or her chamber to the work of the Centre. The success of the centre largely depends on the input provided by the Correspondents.

      The European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments, consisting of the Presidents or Speakers of parliamentary assemblies of members and special guests of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, is the supreme authority for the ECPRD and meets every second year.

      The Secretaries General have administrative responsibility for the activities of the Centre and these are discussed when they meet during the Conference of Speakers. The Co-Directors and the Co-Secretaries: one of each is appointed both by the Secretary General of the European Parliament and by the Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. These officials, who work for the Centre in addition to their normal duties, are responsible for the day-to-day running of the ECPRD. The Conference of Correspondents is the annual meeting of Correspondents at which the activities of the ECPRD are discussed and broad policy decisions are taken.

      The Executive Committee is composed of the Co-Directors and three Correspondents appointed by the Conference of Correspondents in order to ensure the continuity of work between the annual meetings. At the Conference of Correspondents held in Bucharest in October 2005, it was decided to co-opt a fourth Correspondent member to the Executive Committee in order to ensure better geographical balance. The Executive Committee meets at least twice a year. The Secretariat of the Centre, including the running of its website, is provided by officials of the European Parliament. The working languages of the Centre are English, French and German.

      Currently, the Co-Directors are Alain Barrau (European Parliament) and Wojciech Sawicki (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe). The Co-Secretaries are Hanneke Coppolecchia (European Parliament) and Mario Heinrich (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe).

      3.4.       How is it financed?

      Direct financing of the ECPRD comes from a dedicated line of the European Parliament budget. This pays for certain meetings, publications, personnel, secretariat and computing expenses. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe also finances certain activities of the Centre.

      Indirect financing takes the form of member parliaments hosting seminars and meetings of the Centre and providing meeting rooms and interpreters. Some publications are also financed in this way. All parliaments pay the travel and subsistence costs of their own officials for all seminars and meetings. For the parliaments of central and eastern Europe, some financial support has been available from the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to assist with these expenses.

4.       Annual Programmes

      4.1.       ECPRD Programme 2004

      4.2.       ECPRD Programme 2005

      4.3.       ECPRD Programme 2006

4.4.       ECPRD Draft Programme 2007

5.       ECPRD Activities 2004 – 2006

      5.1.       General

In the two-year period under review (March 2004 – March 2006), the activities of the ECPRD could be described as follows:

- the number of requests for comparative studies and notes have increased substantially;

- replies to the requests have been relatively quick and they have also increased in number;

- fewer seminars have been organised when compared with previous periods. This is because of the fewer number of proposals coming from national parliaments and because of organisational changes within the European Parliament;

- seminars which have been organised have been successful. They have been well prepared, well attended and appreciated by those present.

According to the ECPRD Statutes, its main objective is to promote the exchange of information. This is done by a well established procedure of comparative requests which can be presented by all member parliaments. The ECPRD guidelines on studies and comparative questions adopted in January 2004 have facilitated the management of this important activity.

5.2.       The evolution of comparative requests

Since the adoption of the Guidelines for comparative requests (January 2004), a growing number of requests have been duly prepared, together with background information and a reply model. They have been received by the ECPRD Secretariat via the electronic form available on the webpage. The number of comparative requests has been increasing continuously: from 138 in 2004 to 160 in 2005 (an increase of 15%). For the years 2002 and 2003 the numbers were 42 and 96 respectively.

The subjects of the comparative requests concern:

a) parliamentary procedure and practice (55%);

b) national legislation (40%);

c) other issues (5%).

Unfortunately, the number of final comparative studies provided by requesting chambers remains low (17 in 2005, 9 of which were prepared by the European Parliament). However, a significant improvement has been observed in recent months. The Executive Committee will raise the matter again with all Correspondents at the next Annual Conference in London. The availability of comparative studies – even in the language of the requesting parliament only – is of the utmost importance for a better exchange of information.

Less than half the requests were sent to all Correspondents, 25 % to the Correspondents of the 25 EU-countries, and 27% to the Correspondents of specifically indicated countries. (There is a tendency to send more requests to specific countries only. In 2004 the percentage was 19.5 %, while in 2005 it was 27.5 %).

The number of replies has increased. The ECPRD Secretariat received 2.493 replies during the year 2004 and 3.216 in 2005 (an increase of 29 %). Most of the replies were received within the indicated deadline. All requests and corresponding replies have been placed on the ECPRD website. The website search-module is applicable also to the domain of requests (This holds for current ones as well as for those which have been archived. The total number of comparative requests available on the website amount to 500, as of 31 December 2005). At the last Annual Conference in Bucharest, the Correspondents underlined the value of comparative requests and asked for a more user-friendly electronic archive.

It is clear that those parliaments/chambers which present comparative requests more frequently are also those which are better at replying to the requests of other parliaments/chambers. On the other hand, not every parliament/chamber has sufficient staff to reply to all requests. It is important to note that a smaller number of replies does not necessarily signify any lesser interest in the ECPRD's comparative requests.

In 2005, the US Congress (Congressional Research Service) and the Knesset of Israel started to participate actively in our comparative requests: Israel has asked for 4 comparative requests, and we have received 44 replies from the US and 48 replies from the Knesset.

The list of the titles of comparative requests for the years 2004 and 2005, together with more detailed statistical data, are included in Annex 1 to this report.

5.3.       Seminars

Role of Legislative Services in the Legislative Process (Warsaw, 25-26 March 2004)

The aim of this seminar was to discuss the ways in which bills are formulated and drafted both before their submission to parliament and during the parliamentary procedure. A number of important related topics were dealt with, such as the transparency of the legislative drafting process; the tasks of legislative services resulting from the new role of national parliaments in the transposition and implementation of the European law; and models of consultation with institutions and citizens. It was the intention of organisers to engage in a comparative study of the law-making process between the various European and other legal and political systems. Toward that end, background data based on an extensive questionnaire were collected to serve as a starting point for the discussion. Twenty-seven parliaments replied to the questionnaire. Representatives of thirty-one countries participated in the seminar.

Parliamentary Public Relations (Bratislava, 22-23 April 2004)

Three main topics were debated at this seminar:

- The public information policy of parliaments;

- The planning and organisation of proactive public relation campaigns, including outreach programmes, education campaigns and other events;

- The use of ICT in the promotion of the openness and transparency of parliaments.

Plenary sessions were held on each topic on the basis of introductory papers and the statements of expert speakers. They were followed by two workshops on parliamentary web pages and video programmes.

An exhaustive questionnaire was used to produce a comparative analysis of the PR activities of 26 parliaments.

The organising Slovak National Council simultaneously held an exhibition of materials used by different national parliaments for public relation purposes. The collection included brochures, leaflets, booklets, books, posters, calendars, videos and CDs.

Security in Parliaments (Ljubljana, 27-28 May 2004)

This seminar was also based on a detailed questionnaire. A total of 22 parliaments replied and a 19-page comparative analysis was prepared by the Slovenian parliament.

The basic dilemma of how to balance the need for openness of parliaments as symbols of democracy with that for improving security of parliamentary premises formed the main theme for discussion the first day. Information on best practices was exchanged via expert presentations by representatives from three parliaments.

Another important issue discussed was to what extent parliaments should have an independent role in assessing security risks.

This was the first time that ECPRD parliaments discussed security issues. The success of the seminar led participants to recommend that the ECPRD create a permanent forum for security in European parliaments.

Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services: meeting users’ changing needs (London, 4-5 November 2004)

Participants represented perhaps the largest ‘Europe’ ever seen represented at an ECPRD seminar, in that there were not only representatives from as far afield as Iceland, Armenia, Finland and Portugal, but also colleagues from Israel, the United States and Canada and delegates from the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The presentations and discussions concentrated on the pivotal role which parliamentary libraries and research services have in helping democracies work; on the House of Commons Library’s Change Project, which involved a major analysis of users’ needs; on the Canadian Parliament’s view of what Members of Parliament need (on the basis of a comprehensive survey of user preferences); and on how the Italian Senate manages to meet wide-ranging needs with limited resources.

The presentations were followed by four workshops dealing with specific aspects of the seminar’s overall agenda. One workshop dealt with how parliamentary libraries and research services identify their users and assess their needs, while another focussed on how they manage relations with clients so as to improve services. One main aim was to identify examples of best practices. A third workshop looked at ways in which libraries and research services ensure co-operation with other sources of information, while a fourth tackled the subject of performance measurement.

The second day of the seminar heard reports from the different workshops, leading to lively discussion. This was preceded by a presentation by the United Kingdom National Audit Office on assessing performance, in particular about how that office ensures high quality in the reports it prepares. This led to an interesting discussion of far the British model could be applied in other parliaments.

Technical Aspects Derived from Relations between the European Parliament and EU Member States National Parliaments (Madrid, 27-28 October 2005)

      The aim of this seminar was to discuss links and relations between National Parliaments and the European Parliament. Special attention was given to the role and tasks performed by the correspondents of the National Parliaments in the European Parliament. This seminar was also based on a detailed questionnaire, to which 22 parliaments replied.

****

      Seminars organised within the framework of the Macroeconomic Research and ICT Working Groups are described in Section 5.4 of this report. Full reports on all these meetings are available on the ECPRD website. Most of the seminars follow a set pattern in which, after the main introductory speeches, the plenary session is broken up into smaller working groups allowing for more in-depth exchanges.

      A number of host parliaments have also produced full reports of seminar proceedings. On nearly all occasions an extensive questionnaire is sent out prior to the seminar, the results of which are then used as the basis for discussion and published in the final report.

      Annual Conferences of Correspondents took place in Berlin in 2004 and Bucharest in 2005. Detailed reports of these conferences can be found under Sections 10.2 and 10.3. The Executive Committee is grateful to all parliaments that hosted ECPRD events over the period. Our special thanks go to the Secretaries General of the parliaments concerned and to their staff.

      All in all, events over the years 2004 – 2006 attracted almost 640 participants from practically all ECPRD member parliaments. The details of attendance at ECPRD seminars are included in the Annex 2 to this report.

      The European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have continued to cover the travel and accommodation costs of representatives from central and eastern European countries. However, after the ten applicant countries became members of the EU in May 2004, the financial assistance they received from the ECPRD was discontinued.

      The following parliaments may request financial assistance from the European Parliament for the participation of one person to each seminar: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, the “former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, Turkey and Ukraine; Similarly, the following parliaments may request financial assistance from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the participation of one person to each seminar: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Serbia and Montenegro.

5.4.       Operations of the Working Groups

      Following a decision by the Executive Committee, the Macroeconomic Research Working Group (Co-ordinator: Kjell Torbiörn) met only once in each of the years 2004 and 2005 (contrary to the previous habit of meeting twice a year).

      A meeting in Sofia from 16 to 18 April 2004 at the kind invitation of the Bulgarian Parliament was devoted to three themes: “Bulgaria’s progress toward European Union membership”; “The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact: dead or just injured?”; and “Overcoming Cancùn: prospects for a successful conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda”. Guest speakers included Mr Ognyan Avramov, Secretary General of the Bulgarian parliament; leading Bulgarian members of government and parliament; and representatives of the OECD and the World Trade Organisation.

      The Macroeconomic Research Working Group in 2005 met from 3 to 5 June in Yerevan at the kind invitation of the Armenian parliament to discuss three themes: “Economic opportunities and challenges for Armenia and other countries in the South Caucasus region”; “The importance of regional integration of the South Caucasus countries, especially in view of further rapprochement with the European Union and integration into the world economy”; and “Outsourcing: a challenge for Europe, a chance for the world? National experiences”. Guest speakers included Mr Arthur Baghdasasaryan, Chairman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia; leading Armenian members of government and parliament; and representatives of the World Bank.

      In 2004 the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Working Group (Co-ordinator: Piet van Rijn, succeeded in 2005 by Joao Viegas Abreu) met at the Assembly of the Republic in Lisbon, Portugal, from 17 to 19 of November.

      The seminar was attended by 88 members of 37 countries representing 48 Parliaments/Chambers. The discussion focused on the following themes:

- E-parliament: The role of ICT in bringing Parliament closer to the citizens

- Mobility: Towards a wireless Parliament?

- Security: Security of the Parliamentary Information System.

      In 2005 there was no Seminar of the ICT Working Group owing to the absence of an invitation by a member parliament. In November 2005, at the Conference of Correspondents in Bucharest, Mr. Joao Viegas Abreu, Head of IT Department of the Portuguese Parliament, was nominated as Coordinator of the ICT Working Group.

      In 2006 the annual meeting of the ICT Working Group will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 5 and 6 October. The main themes to be discussed in the 2006 ICT Working Group Seminar will be selected from those suggested by participants in the last Seminar.

      5.5.       The Executive Committee

      During the period under review the Executive Committee was composed of the two Co-Directors (Mr Dick Toornstra – replaced by Mr Bo Manderup Jensen from 1 January 2005 and subsequently by Mr Alain Barrau as from 16 January 2006 – and Mr Wojciech Sawicki) and three representatives of different ECPRD parliaments. These included Mrs Elise Holt, Mrs Natasa Glavnik, Mr Robert Clements, Mr Alessandro Palanza and Mr Borys Kolisnychenko.

      Mrs Holt from the Danish Folketing was replaced by Mr Clements from the House of Commons at the Conference of Correspondents in Berlin in 2004, in accordance with Article 6.2 of the Statutes. Mr Palanza from the Italian Camera dei Deputati was elected in October 2003 and will be replaced at the 2006 Conference of Correspondents in London after his conclusion of his three-year mandate.

      At the Conference of Correspondents in Berlin in October 2004, the seat on the Executive Committee of Mrs Zatkalikova from the National Council of Slovakia - who had gone into early retirement at the end of 2003 - was taken over by Mrs Glavnik from the National Assembly of Slovenia. Mrs Glavnik was subsequently re-elected by the Conference of Correspondents in Bucharest in October 2005 for a regular three-year term.

      At the Conference of Correspondents held in Bucharest in October 2005, it was also decided to co-opt a fourth Correspondent member to the Executive Committee. This was in order to ensure better geographical balance, but also in anticipation of possible statutory changes implying an enlargement of the Executive Committee membership. Following this decision, the Conference co-opted Mr Kolisnychenko from Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to the Executive Committee.

      The Executive meets twice a year and according to tradition the spring meeting takes place in the venue of one of the parliaments of the three Executive Committee members, while that in the autumn is held in Brussels and Strasbourg alternatively.

      Over the period the Executive Committee has debated the annual programmes, the website, legislative cooperation and exchanges, issues relating to the functioning of the working groups, the modification of the ECPRD Statutes to name but a few of the most salient topics. Substantial attention was also given to the preparation of the annual Conferences of Correspondents in Berlin in 2004, in Bucharest in 2005 and in London in 2006.

      The Executive Committee has devoted extensive discussion over the period to ways of improving the structure for managing requests for comparative studies and surveys, including via a possible revision of existing guidelines. There has been agreement that the ECPRD network provides a unique forum for requests for and answers to comparative issues and illustrates the usefulness of the setup. All correspondents should try to contribute to this joint effort to exchange information among national parliaments, since this is in a way the very core of the ECPRD’s raison d’être. An active input by all parliaments and services concerned is considered essential for the Centre to be able to carry out its function.

      The Executive also analysed the usefulness of seminars with regard to content, structure and practical pertinence to parliaments. As in previous years, it had noted with satisfaction that the issues proposed for debates had found wide recognition and that debates had been active, lively and well prepared.

      The question of co-ordinator of the ICT Group was debated by the Executive at both its meetings in 2005. Following extensive discussion - the details of which can be found in the minutes of meetings available on the ECPRD website - the Executive decided to propose to the Conference of Correspondents in Bucharest to nominate Mr Joao Viegas Abreu from Portugal as new Co-ordinator of the ICT Group.

      The Executive was satisfied with the involvement of Deputy-Correspondents in the Centre's work.

      The minutes of the Executive Committee meetings were published in the ECPRD Newsletter and are available on the ECPRD website.

5.6       Correspondents and Deputy Correspondents

      Monaco has become a full member of the Council of Europe, but its Parliament has not yet appointed an ECPRD Correspondent. This is also the case for the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro.

      The updated list of sixty-two Correspondents appears in Annex 3 to this report. In addition, thirty-four Parliaments have nominated Deputy Correspondents, which also figure in Annex 3. New nominations and changes in the list of Correspondents and their Deputies are indicated in the News section of the ECPRD website, and an overview is published every semester in the ECPRD Newsletter.

      In accordance with Article 3 of the Statute, parliaments possessing observer or special guest status with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe "may participate" in the different activities of the ECPRD, but without the right to vote. The parliaments in question are those of Israel, Canada and Mexico. The ECPRD may also co-operate with non-European parliamentary chambers.

      The question as to whether “may participate” should be interpreted, or not, as having the right to full access to the ECPRD (nomination of Correspondent, comparative requests, other questions, etc.) was discussed by the Executive. It was agreed that the only restriction should be the right to vote in the Annual Conference of Correspondents and other ECPRD bodies.

      5.7.       EUROVOC

At the Eurovoc Conference in 2004, it was decided that the European Parliament would organise the Conference of parliamentary users of the Eurovoc multilingual thesaurus system every second year. The last Conference has taken place in Brussels on 10 March 2006.

The strategic importance of the thesaurus has grown over the years in as much as it has been translated now into more than 20 languages. After adoption by the Croatian parliament in 2004, actually also the Georgian parliament is undertaking a translation into Georgian language, which shows clear interest in this thesaurus from non-EU countries.

The use of the thesaurus is considered to be an excellent tool in working with the acquis communautaire and is interesting in the context of IPEX, COSAC and other forms of parliamentary cooperation.

The Eurovoc version 4.2 has been launched at the recent conference on 10 March 2006 in Brussels (in the European Parliament), with 62 participants coming from 24 countries/national Parliaments plus 3 EU-institutions. At this conference, (of which all presentations and speeches are available on ECPRD's webpage), the most recent developments and experience of parliamentary users were discussed in relation to the activities of the Eurovoc Maintenance Committee.

Since 2005, the Publications Office of the European Communities has taken over the formal responsibility for the maintenance and translation of all the linguistic versions. Licences to make use of the thesaurus are freely available to ECPRD parliaments. The Eurovoc thesaurus is actually available in following languages: 17 official languages of the EU plus Bulgarian, Croatian, and Russian. It is actually being translated into Georgian and Romanian as well.

      5.8.       Development of the IPEX project

      The project started in 2000 with the target to offer a platform for an electronic exchange of EU-related information between the national parliaments especially with the scope on the EU scrutiny process. The site should also make the subsidiarity check possible once the Constitutional treaty is in force.

      The years 2004 and 2005 were characterized by the work leading to the IPEX website of the next generation. The work took place on two levels, the Steering Group was supervising the development and issued the general guidelines for further steps, concrete technical questions were dealt with in the Technical Working Group. Functional website should be online for testing purposes by the end of March 2006 and can be launched in the middle of 2006.

      At the meeting of the Secretaries General of the 25 EU-national parliaments in February 2006 the final phase of the development started as the new IPEX guidelines were approved. Members and the chair of the Board were also appointed. As of June 2006 the Danish parliament will take over the leadership in the Board form the Swedes. Parliaments of following countries will contribute to the work of the board in the period 2006-2007: Slovak Republic, Hungary, Italy, France, The United Kingdom, Finland and Denmark. The European Parliament is also member of the Board. COSAC and ECPRD will be associated to the work of the Board.

      An extensive information strategy was planned in Rome in September 2005 to accompany the official start of the website. It should raise the awareness degree about the IPEX - project in the national parliaments as well as in the EP substantially.

6.       Revision of the ECPRD Statutes

During the last meeting of Secretaries General of Parliaments, held on the occasion of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments in Strasbourg on 19 May 2004, it was agreed to convene a small working group of Secretaries General in order to discuss and, if need be, prepare changes to the current Statute of the ECPRD. Mr Bruno Haller and Mr Julian Priestley – Secretaries General of, respectively, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament - were asked to propose a composition and mandate of the group. This was also the procedure used in 1995/1996, when the present Statute was agreed.

The following composition of the Working Group was agreed by the two Secretaries General:

- The Secretary General of the Bundestag (Germany);

- The Secretary General of the Camera dei Deputati (Italy);

- The Secretary General of the Storting (Norway);

- The Secretary General of the Duma (Russian Federation);

- The Secretary General of the Drzavni Zbor (Slovenia);

- The two ECPRD Co-Directors.

In a letter addressed to members of the Working Group, Mr Haller specified the mandate of the group as follows:

“The task of the group would be to generally review, after ten years in force, the current Statute of the ECPRD, particularly in view of the recent EU enlargement and the almost accomplished enlargement of the Council of Europe. Three questions stand out. First, whether the ECPRD should be given additional tasks. Second, what role the ECPRD should have among the different structures for co-operation between national parliaments and in relations with international assemblies. Third, whether the ECPRD should allow regional parliaments to join the organisation. Possible proposals of the group should be ready for submission to the next meeting of Secretaries General in spring 2006, on the occasion of the next Conference of Presidents of Parliaments.”

In order to have the discussion of the Working Group better structured, Mr Haller suggested that the Group concentrate on the following issues:

- ECPRD objectives (possible revision of article 1 of the Statute);

- ECPRD working methods (to have more working groups, to appoint Co-ordinators responsible for specific subjects, to define more precisely the role and position of Correspondents and Deputy Correspondents, etc.);

- ECPRD membership (regional parliaments?);

- The ECPRD vis-à-vis the external world. (The ECPRD’s role within the context of already existing structures for parliamentary co-operation).

Following the envisaged revision, the ECPRD Statute should remain a document which:

- reflects expectations held by member parliaments in regard to the ECPRD;

- presents an open and far-reaching vision of what the ECPRD should be;

- will not become a straitjacket that could undermine its efficient and smooth functioning.

At the first meeting of the Working Group on 26 October 2004, it was agreed that there was no need for any general revision of the ECPRD’s Statutes, but only for their adaptation to new circumstances and possible stylistic and linguistic improvements. Furthermore, the group agreed that it would be improper for the ECPRD to admit regional parliaments as partners of the ECPRD on the same level as national parliaments. The Working Group subsequently met on 20 May 2005 and on 13 January 2006.

      The final draft text approved by the Working Group is included in Annex 4 to this report. It envisages the following changes in the current ECPRD Statutes:

- widening of ECPRD objectives and fields of activity by adding “parliamentary administration and legislation” to the existing ones;

- clarifying the role of Secretaries General within the ECPRD;

- a better definition of the respective roles of the Executive Committee and the Conference of Correspondents;

- enlargement of the ECPRD Executive Committee membership, together with a new rule concerning its decision-making process;

- the replacement of the current structure of working groups by a more flexible structure of Co-ordinators responsible for a given area of activities;

- introducing the possibility of creating ad hoc working groups with specific terms of reference and a limited composition and duration;

- underlining the importance of Information and Communication Technology in the exchange of information;

- formally introducing the position of a Deputy Correspondent.

The procedure envisaged for the adoption of the new Statutes was as follows:

- following the agreement by the Statutory Working Group, the modified draft Statutes would be circulated to the ECPRD correspondents for possible comments before the Correspondents’ Conference in October 2005 in Bucharest;

- amendments proposed by the Conference of Correspondents would be discussed at the final meeting of the Statutory Working Group at the beginning of 2006;

- the final draft would be circulated to the Secretaries General of parliaments as soon as possible after the final meeting of the Group. The Secretaries General would be asked to submit amendments well in advance of the Tallinn meeting in order to simplify the discussion;

- the final adoption of the revised Statutes was foreseen for the next meeting of the Secretaries General of Parliament in Tallinn on 31 May 2006.

7.       The ECPRD website

      The ECPRD's website is hosted by the European Parliament and is the focal point of communication for the whole ECPRD-network.

      The website consists of two parts:

- the public section, open to the general public (with Statutes and Publications, as well as the IPEX-website);

- the private section, accessible via a password and an ID given by the Secretariat to all ECPRD Correspondents and Deputy Correspondents. In this part, they can find any information about current and past activities (such as the calendar of ECPRD events, reports on seminars, comparative requests and replies, publications, newsletters, the directory, lists of Correspondents and Deputy Correspondents, links to parliamentary and other websites, constitutions, parliamentary rules of procedure, legislative databases, whether at European or national level).

      Since the beginning of 2004 (when the questionnaire on the use of the website was circulated), the website has been successively improved and the general search module has been developed and restructured along with electronic forms for requiring assistance or requesting comparative information. The feedback on the site has been positive and Correspondents expressed their satisfaction at the last Annual ECPRD Conference in Bucharest.

      However, any ambitious website which aims to provide a forum for the exchange of parliamentary information must continuously reassess its structure, layout and contents. The Technical Service of the European Parliament therefore wants to create a new and more modern ECPRD website in 2006, also taking into account the new internal standards of the European Parliament. For this a deeper and more proactive involvement on the part of national parliaments will be needed in order for the site to become a truly thriving platform, where parliamentary information can be channelled (on legislation, studies, administration, ICT, best practices, etc.).

      Statistics on the use of the website during the years 2004 and 2005:

Visitors:	2004	2005
Total successful Hits (entire Site)	1.061.275	1.132.047
Daily average	2.899	3.101
Total page views (Impressions)	163.394	195.797
Daily average	466	536
Total visitor sessions	49.314	67.960
Average session length	00:09:57	00:10:45
Total number of visitors	13.095	13.722
of which only one visit	10.418	10.763
of which more than one visit	2.677	2.959

Most frequently used pages:

      While it is easy to determine what pages have been opened most frequently in the public section of the website (Index, About us, Publications, the IPEX-database), the use of the password for the private section does not permit determination of the most frequently visited pages over the whole period. However, following a sample of one week (beginning of October 2005), it was found that Comparative Requests, the Calendar of Events and the Events Reports, the Directory and the News were those most often opened and downloaded.

8.       The ECPRD Net Fellows project

      The Net Fellows project was launched at the Annual Conference of Correspondents in Berlin in 2000 with a view to creating an opportunity for young officials working in central and eastern European parliaments to visit the European Parliament in Brussels and to participate in the activities of ECPRD.

      Unfortunately, for administrative reasons, the project was discontinued as from January 2004. In the period between January 2001 and December 2003 the ECPRD hosted a total number of 22 net fellows.

      We can state that the Net Fellows project has enabled them to obtain first-hand information about the work of the European parliament as well as about ECPRD. Most of the former net fellows remain actively involved in our network, as ECPRD, EUROVOC or IPEX correspondents or deputy-correspondents.

9.       ECPRD Publications

      Traditionally, the ECPRD publishes its Newsletter twice a year, in July and in December. The newsletter contains the minutes of all meetings and seminars, updates of the correspondents and deputy-correspondents’ list and information flashes on current debates and comparative publications in parliaments.

      A new edition of the Directory has been produced (April 2006), including additional sectors and relevant addresses in the national parliaments, with links to the Constitutions, Rules of Procedure, Parliamentary Committees, Parliamentary Libraries and other relevant services and documents of parliaments (wherever available, also with links to official translations of several documents).

      Unfortunately and mainly due to the staff shortages, there were no major ECPRD publications during the period March 2004 to March 2006.

10.       Minutes of Meetings

10.1.       Report on the meeting of the Secretaries-General of Parliaments, Members of the ECPRD, Strasbourg, 19 May 2004

Mr Bruno Haller (Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) declared the meeting open at 8.35. He extended a warm welcome to the participants and recalled that previous Conference of Presidents and meetings of Secretaries General had been held in Strasbourg in 2000 and in Zagreb in 2002. He thanked the Croatian Parliament, its Secretary General and staff for having so well organised the latter Conference.

1.       Draft agenda

The draft agenda was adopted.

2.       Minutes

The draft minutes of the meeting held in Zagreb on 10 May 2002 were approved.

3.        Activity Report of the European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD) 2002-2004

and

4.        Future activities of the ECPRD

Mr Haller proposed to hold a joint debate on agenda items 3 and 4

Agreed

He then invited Mr Sawicki, Co-Director of the ECPRD, to present the activity report.and the future activities of the ECPRD.

Mr Sawicki said that the reference dates for the period covered by the progress report coincided with respectively the 25^th anniversary of the ECPRD in 2002 and the EU enlargement in 2004.

The main task of the Centre was to deal with information on parliaments. This information was exchanged by comparative studies, by answering questions asked by national parliaments and by replying to questionnaires. The organisation of seminars and conferences by the ECPRD assisted the networking of parliamentary officials and allowed staff to learn from one another's experience.

Mr Sawicki thanked the Secretaries General who, since the Conference of Presidents of Parliaments held in Zagreb, had appointed deputy correspondents to the Centre, enlarging the network of people directly working for it.

In the last two years 18 seminars and conferences had been held. The ECPRD thanked all hosting parliaments of these events, namely - in chronological order - Finland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Netherlands (two seminars), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Lithuania, Russia, Romania, Italy, Cyprus, Poland, Bulgaria, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Co-Directors of the Centre were well aware that for logistical and budgetary reasons the organisation of such conferences and seminars required a special effort from the hosting parliaments. These events covered a wide variety of subjects and had been attended by more than 1150 persons. The average attendance figured at 64 and had in recent years constantly grown. At each seminar and conference at least 25 parliamentary chambers were represented.

The two ECPRD working groups (ICT and Macroeconomic Research) functioned successfully and there were good echoes from the participants. The Centre thanked the two working group co-ordinators Kjell Torbiörn and Piet van Rijn for their commitment.

Another successful part of the ECPRD’s activity were the comparative requests and studies. Some 200 such requests had been received from parliaments, quite a number of them had led to comparative studies which had been made available on the ECPRD’s website.

However, as the requests were continuously growing, there had also been reactions from national parliaments saying that it was too much work and also underlining the need to organise requests in a better way. Consequently, guidelines on questionnaires and comparative studies of the ECPRD had been established and adopted by the Correspondents, which had been applied in practice since the beginning of 2004.

Mr Sawicki then recalled the main principles of financing the ECPRD’s structure. For the holding of seminars and conferences the Centre profited from those national parliaments who hosted them and covered their cost to a certain extent. The main part of the cost was interpretation.

The European Parliament’s budget had an “ECPRD” line. Furthermore, within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe some money was allocated to certain ECPRD activities. Both the EP and the Parliamentary Assembly tried to help some parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe in ensuring a better participation in ECPRD activities and particularly covered the expenditure of their representatives.

The expenses for ECPRD publications were mainly borne by the EP.

Apart from these limited resources there was no specific ECPRD budget and its activities were to a certain extent carried out on a voluntary basis. This also concerned members of the Executive Committee and the small ECPRD Secretariat in Brussels, where three persons worked partially with the ECPRD structure. In this connection Mr Sawicki thanked in particular Mrs Hanneke Coppolecchia and Mrs Dorne Jackson.

Mr Haller thanked Mr Sawicki for his statement and gave the floor to Mr Toornstra.

Mr Toornstra (Co-Director of the ECPRD) reported on two major aspects of his work for the Centre: its website and the IPEX project.

The ECPRD’s website had to be continuously supervised, reassessed, reviewed and redesigned. 85 % of the visitors to that website had repeatedly made an extensive use of the site’s private section content. A survey conducted with the users had shown that some 70% rated the structure and content of the ECPRD site between good and excellent. When the ECPRD asked parliaments to make a contribution it was normally forthcoming. But when it was agreed that parliaments should also send on their own initiative contributions to the ECPRD Secretariat, which were of interest to other parliaments, the rate of return was very slack.

A message and alert system would henceforth inform Correspondents of specific updates or changes on the site which were relevant to their work.

Also the database of comparative studies was being developed. The new terms and conditions for requests, the guidelines mentioned by Mr Sawicki, had not reduced their number but enabled the ECPRD to look at questionnaires with greater precision and understanding. All the final and other pertinent studies of which the ECPRD was informed would be included into a comprehensive dynamic database which was searchable in multiple ways.

The conferences of Correspondents regularly debated the question if the ECPRD site should be made public or remain what it was today: a widely (80%) private site.

The Co-Directors of the ECPRD would again make a number of changes in the course of the year to improve the Centre’s website and render it a practical tool of exchange of information and communication among parliaments

Mr Toornstra then commented on the IPEX project, which was mentioned in the progress report. He recalled that the decision to create IPEX stemmed from the Conference of Speakers of EU parliaments, held in Rome in 2000. The Speakers had asked some Secretaries General, to create, with the input of the ECPRD, an electronic platform to enable parliaments to foster legislative cooperation and to improve the exchange mechanisms through which documents could be handed over. Between 2000 and 2003 a template model inspired by the Swedish Parliament was defined. In September 2003 a pilot project of the IPEX was launched. An IPEX Steering Group was created which worked on offering an operational model in the hope that by January 2005 IPEX would not just be a project but an operational system helping parliaments to co-operate on EU legislative matters. IPEX was run on the ECPRD site and was maintained by Mr Toornstra’s staff.

The files for the present meeting contained the main recommendations of the IPEX Steering Group. In the coming weeks the Group would meet in London and examine a very specific technical model which had been prepared by the Danes in cooperation with the Swedish parliament.

One consequence of IPEX for the ECPRD was that a more powerful server had been purchased for the ECPRD with the capacity to run a comprehensive IPEX module. Furthermore, the ECPRD’s legislative box had been replaced by that of IPEX.

If one looked back over the activities of the last two years one could identify two major groups. One dealt with anything that was related to the legislative method, the concept, the approximation, the supervision, but also related to the administrative set-up of parliaments.

The other group referred to all matters concerning the use of Internet, the new technologies, the information flow and the documentary aspects of parliamentary work. Everything indicated that these groups would be the main fields of attention for the coming two years.

Mr Haller thanked Mr Toornstra for his statement.

Mr Clerc (National Council, Switzerland) thanked the Co-Directors of the ECPRD for their presentations. He said that questionnaires were sent not only by the ECPRD but also by other International Institutions such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of the French Speaking Countries (Francophonie) and this constituted a serious workload for national parliaments. He asked if before sending out a new questionnaire the Centre took account of the relevant work of other institutions based on questionnaires of a similar type to those of the ECPRD.

Mr Toornstra said that Mr Clerc was right. It was exactly this problem which had led the Conference of Correspondents to create a small working party to elaborate guidelines for organising requests for comparative questions and other question types. Before introducing requests, it should always be checked if the replies asked for were not already available somewhere.

That is why the idea was to create a database regrouping questions, studies and reports related to these questions as far as possible. Participants would thus be offered a most dynamic and complete search engine, capable of exerting a kind of supervision before a parliament decided to send a questionnaire.

Mr Forsberg (Sweden) said that some years ago it was a common opinion that the ECPRD was mainly a network for officials in research services and in parliamentary libraries.

However, it was more and more important to involve other parts of parliamentary administration and organisation in the Centre’s activities which had expanded. In particular he would like to see more colleagues from the parliamentary committee secretariats and the chamber offices as participants in the events organised by the Centre.

He wondered if there had already been some changes in the participants of the Centre’s seminars and conferences.

Mr Toornstra said that since the ECPRD had introduced a system obliging a parliament hosting a conference to issue a questionnaire and to state more precisely the theme of the conference it had been noticed that parliaments sending staff members to attend such a conference were increasingly selecting the kind of representative best suited. Whereas some years ago participants were coming essentially from the library, research or documentation services, it was nowadays quite visible that for instance ECPRD conferences dealing with legislative matters were attended by either staff from the legal departments, from the committee structures or from whichever service was in charge of legislative assistance. Meetings on ICT were frequented by technicians, webmasters and ICT engineers, who had created a permanent network among themselves. These activities had engendered great interest with external organisations/institutions in Europe.

In conclusion, the profile of participants in the ECPRD’s events had changed. There was more expertise and more qualified attendance and debates were more lively.

Mr Sawicki said that at the last meeting of the Executive Board of the Centre the question of widening the scope of the ECPRD’s activities had been discussed and its Statutes had been taken into consideration which in a way limited the Centre’s activities to parliamentary information, research and the documentation. It was thought that it could be appropriate to modify the Statutes by taking into account the real activities of the recent years and adding administrative and legislative questions of parliament. The Centre had an increasing number of requests to cover these fields of activities.

The amendment of the Statutes required the action of the Secretaries General. The last modification had been done in Budapest in 1996.

With respect to the Statutes the Centre faced another issue: requests coming from regional parliaments. In fact, the Statutes did not allow the Centre to work directly with regional parliaments, as its partners were national parliaments. But a number of European countries had regional parliaments with differing competences and which would like to co-operate directly with the ECPRD. This was an issue to be decided at the level of Secretaries General. If this was agreed today it could also be examined in the framework of a small ad hoc working group to review the Centre’s Statutes. As in 1996 this group could be composed of three or four Secretaries General to be appointed by the Secretaries General of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly. The group could be mandated to propose some modification of the Statutes relating to the enlargement of the ECPRD’s activities and relations with regional parliaments for the next meeting of Secretaries General in two years. There might be further questions to be considered.

Mr de Beaufort (Second Chamber, Netherlands) and Mr Forsberg supported the proposal by Mr Sawicki to institute an ad hoc working group of Secretaries General appointed by Mr Priestley and Mr Haller.

Mr Haller said that he could see that many other colleagues also agreed with Mr Sawicki’s proposal, thanked participants for their support, and said that he would proceed accordingly.

Mr de Beaufort referred to the Activity Report where it was mentioned that at the beginning of the year 18 parliaments were participating in IPEX. He wondered if their number had increased in the meantime and what was meant by the term of parliament in connection with IPEX. Should in a parliamentary system with two chambers the representation be organised on the basis of the country or on that of the chambers?

He then referred to paragraph 7.3 of the progress report which contained the recommendations concerning IPEX. The first one was related to the calendar of meetings and other events in parliaments and was of great usefulness.

What progress had been made with preparing the calendar? Was it reliable? Should the parliaments which supported IPEX give information for the calendar’s contents all the time? He recalled that two years ago a meeting of the “Athens group” had taken place and then also a calendar of forthcoming meetings of parliaments had been distributed which did not claim to be complete.

IPEX was of interest for the EU member states and in particular for the candidate countries. What was its usefulness for the countries which still remained outside the EU?

Mr Forsberg said that all parliamentary chambers had the opportunity to be represented by a correspondent or contact person in the IPEX project and that the number of participants was continuously increasing. Although functioning in cooperation with it, IPEX was not an ECPRD project.

As the creators of IPEX were involved in and responsible for the ECPRD it had been considered rational to use the ECPRD as Internet platform for IPEX.

The advantages for non-EU member countries were that much of the information available in IPEX would be public. They could therefore follow the developments concerning important proposals that were in progress in the EU.

The working group for IPEX was active and he hoped to be able to say more about it in the meeting in The Hague in July 2004.

Mr Toornstra said that he could only endorse what Mr Forsberg had said. IPEX was not the ECPRD. It was using facilities already existing in the framework of the ECPRD. Instead of creating all kind of new forums, agencies, working groups, cooperative mechanisms, it was very essential to use the potential of the ECPRD which since 1977 offered an effective framework of cooperation.

This was one of the main raisons why the Speakers of Parliament had chosen the ECPRD as the platform though which IPEX would become operational.

Access to IPEX would become accessible through the public section of the ECPRD website and would thus be available for the public at large. IPEX would also have a private section which would serve as a forum for maintaining relations between the IPEX correspondents and the IPEX management.

Referring to Mr de Beaufort’s question on the calendar of activities in the parliaments of the EU, Mr Toornstra said that according to his experience calendars were an attempt to list as much as possible forthcoming events. A calendar would obviously be incomplete if insufficient or no information was sent from organisers of planned meetings, seminars, etc. to a central source. Although there were 430 permanent committees in the parliaments of the enlarged EU with more than 9000 parliamentarians, an attempt would be made to produce an overview of forthcoming conferences and similar events organised by parliaments. This could also help to reduce the risk of preparing conferences on the same subject.

Mr Toornstra also pointed out that in general a great variety of calendars of events of a European character were circulating and it could be attempted to integrate the different models into one, to offer it on-line and to ensure a possible daily up-dating. However, such up-dating could only take place in as much as there was an input from the relevant institutions, organisations and particularly, parliamentary bodies.

Mrs Corte-Real (Portugal) said that she was very pleased to participate for the first time in a meeting of the Secretaries General of parliaments of the ECPRD. She supported the Activity Report and observed that their staff members participated intensely in the activities of the Centre’s ICT Working Group which were very positively assessed. The ECPRD Correspondent of the Portuguese Parliament had already invited the ICT Working Group to hold a meeting in Lisbon between 17 and 19 November. The Speaker of Parliament was ready to open that meeting.

Mr Palanza (Camera dei Deputati, Italy) said that the horizontal co-ordination between IPEX and ECPRD networks which maintained their autonomy, was most rational.

He signalled that in this period of strong formalisation of relations between national parliaments, some new organisms of a sectored character had been developed, for instance in the spatial field and concerning new technologies. The Council of Europe could work efficiently to maintain a relation among all these bodies similar to that which the ECPRD had managed to establish with IPEX and COSAC, both of which are bodies with precise aims. This should be done in a framework able to deal with the overlapping of and links between the various activities.

Mr Cavero (Senate, Spain) observed that the evolution of the ECPRD had included possibilities of exchanging information not only on documentation or on parliamentary library matters but also on other matters not related with documentation services. The Spanish Senate would certainly not be represented by a librarian at the forthcoming ECPRD seminar in Ljubljana on security in parliaments.

In his view the Centre had enlarged its activities in a normal and practical way. It was therefore doubtful whether a modification of the Centre’s Statutes was necessary to cover these new activities. A possible enlargement of the membership of the Centre to include members of regional parliaments was a very political question. He was not sure that the Spanish Parliament and in particular the Spanish Senate could endorse any proposals in that way, bearing in mind that neither the European Parliament nor the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) had among its members regional parliamentarians or members appointed by regions of the member states. Again this was another reason why he was unsure that a review of the Statutes was necessary.

Mr Haller agreed that the last point was a political one. The PACE was often approached by regional parliaments to support what they were doing and sometimes the Assembly sent representatives to their sessions. Regional parliaments did a good job as they helped the integration of Europe on a regional basis. The PACE had the intention to organise a meeting with representatives of regional parliaments in Strasbourg.

Mr Toornstra had sympathy with what Mr Cavero had said. Relations with regional parliaments were by definition a political question. As it was on the table a debate should be held and a decision be taken.

Mr Sawicki and himself received increasing information requests from representatives of the regions based in Brussels. They would like to be able to access available information on the ECPRD network.

In the European Parliament the debate on relationships with regional parliaments had begun. It is probable that a survey on the situation regarding regional parliaments in Europe would be produced. Once this was available, it could be sent to Secretaries General of parliaments and to Correspondents for discussion at the next meeting of Secretaries General in two years time or at a separate meeting.

Mr Haller thanked all those who had spoken in the debate and particularly the Co-Directors of the ECPRD and their teams for their work. The Secretaries General were invited to endorse the Activity Report, which they duly did and proposed that it should be presented to the Conference of Presidents.

5.        The role of Secretaries General in strengthening co-operation between national parliaments, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and other European assemblies

Mr Haller said that since the last meeting of Secretaries General in Zagreb in 2002 the Council of Europe had a new member state; Serbia and Montenegro. He welcomed Mrs Papic from the Permanent Representation of Serbia and Montenegro to the Council of Europe.

Mrs Papic thanked Mr Haller and said that the Secretary General of the national parliament of her country had been prevented from attending the present meeting.

Mr Haller said that pending the accession of Monaco to the Council of Europe, which should take place as soon as possible, the Bureau of PACE had decided in April 2004 to grant special guest status to the National Council of Monaco.

He then referred to his paper which was in the files. PACE offered a network of persons committed to European unification, sharing the same values. This potential was not always fully recognised. Members of PACE, while making an essential contribution to its work gained at the same time a considerable European experience which was most useful to their countries. He personally knew about 50 PACE members, who presently carried out major governmental, parliamentary or even presidential functions in their countries. It was their activities and their experiences in PACE which had helped them to accede to these high national functions.

Members who had prepared reports to PACE on the accession of a country to the Council of Europe, on the monitoring of commitments of a country or on the conflict in a region would never forget it. The current conflicts in Council of Europe member states were complex matters. A parliamentarian who committed himself to study a conflict, to present new ideas to try to find solutions got a lot of knowledge, in particular regarding parliamentary diplomacy. Furthermore, he learned to respect other cultures and to reflect on the fundamental principles of democracy. The members which national parliaments sent to the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe, of the WEU and the OSCE did valuable work.

Mr Haller then said that without creating new institutions more could be done with the existing parliamentary network. Perhaps the member states did not always have a sufficient Council of Europe reflex and PACE itself did not ask for this. Moreover, the new EU enlargement was an important stage for the EU and had therefore great priority in the EU and in national parliaments.

It would have been useful if for some subjects dealt with recently by PACE more information had been available on national developments. Therefore he wondered if a system could be set up aimed at communicating to PACE national information which had a bearing on its work. For example, for the Assembly’s report on euthanasia, debated in April 2004 and then referred back to the competent committee, it was fundamental to consider what happened at national level. The Assembly was the appropriate place to confront the solutions which had already been found at national level. Some countries had enacted legislation and others were about to do so. Sometimes it was forgotten that often in national parliaments and particularly in PACE, debates like that on euthanasia had been initiated by a motion tabled by one of their members. It was most important that national parliamentary delegations to PACE provided the relevant information.

PACE’s organs now were very selective with respect to inscribing reports for debate on the order of business of a plenary session. This was necessary as PACE only had four part-sessions. However, once draft orders of business had been prepared it was most difficult to withdraw a report.

Also PACE could do more to improve the information flow on its work. That is why the conclusions of his report included some concrete proposals. One was the creation of a permanent electronic newsletter on the Assembly's activities and events. It would allow national parliaments to react and to communicate information on related activities under way. This was being studied in co-operation with the PACE’s communication unit and could be operational before the summer recess or in September 2004. For the distribution of the newsletter, it would be important to have the right contact persons in national parliaments and a questionnaire might be sent out for that purpose.

Mr Haller then raised the question of organising information seminars and visits for the secretariat of national parliaments. This was not to create a new burden of work for national parliaments or PACE, but just to promote interaction. In the past such seminars had mainly been made for secretaries of national delegations. Now, the Assembly was ready to enlarge them. If the Secretaries General considered that it would be more useful that representatives of the PACE Secretariat should go to national parliaments, he himself, Mr Sawicki and others were willing to do so. It was important that information should not be limited to those who came to Strasbourg to the plenary and committee meetings. There were very few contacts at committee level and this was regrettable. Indeed, there were often more common points and more interesting things to say among corresponding committees than within delegations of Assemblies which visited each other.

Finally, Mr Haller mentioned the Assembly’s assistance programmes. Such assistance could not be done bilaterally only, there was need for concertation. The Council of Europe and PACE only had limited resources. National parliaments also were under financial pressure. Therefore, it was essential to create synergies and PACE’s secretariat had recourse to national officials, for instance from Belgium and the Netherlands who had the necessary experience. Occasionally, former PACE members had been called for some specific missions. All this should be developed pragmatically and would be followed up.

Mr Lanz (Council of States, Switzerland) thanked Mr Haller for his paper and his proposals which he fully supported. He also thanked him for giving his support to the organisation of a seminar in September 2004 in Strasbourg with all committee secretaries of the Swiss Council of States. With reference to item 3 of Mr Haller’s conclusions, Mr Lanz said that he was prepared to encourage officials of his service to go once to a new member state of the Council of Europe. He wondered if the secretariat of PACE would be able to offer a certain assistance with regard to requests and offers and a kind of coordination of such activities among national parliaments.

Mr Sawicki said that the Co-Directors of the ECPRD would try to provide this information.

Mr Haller said that he looked forward to the seminar mentioned by Mr Lanz.

Mr Spencer Oliver (OSCE Assembly) endorsed Mr Haller’s statement and particularly what he had said about utilising the potential of international parliamentary assemblies to work with national parliaments. A few days ago, Kofy Annan had appointed as Executive Director of the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate of the UN, Javier Ruperez who was the Spanish Ambassador to the USA and also former President of the Assemblies of OSCE and NATO. He was very anxious to work with national parliaments to try to ensure that the twelve protocols on terrorism of the UN were ratified by all parliaments in the world and that legislation to put those protocols into effect was adopted at national level.

It seemed to him that the regional parliamentary assemblies not just in Europe, but also working with IPU, the parliament of the Americas, the representatives of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly, the Council of Europe, NATO and WEU Assemblies could at administrative level, provide some information, coordination and monitoring that could assist the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate of the UN to ensure that the twelve protocols were ratified by the member states. This could be done in a very practical was and would be of great assistance.

Mr Haller thanked Mr Spencer Oliver for this interesting proposal. They could discuss together with Colin Cameron (WEU Assembly) what modalities would be the most appropriate as follow-up to the proposal.

Mr Colin Cameron (WEU Assembly) agreed with what Mr Spencer Oliver had said. This was an absolutely vital issue to be cleared now.

He was frustrated he said, with the one meeting of Secretaries General of parliament held every second year. Because in the meantime the discussions on the various aspects dealt with at their meeting, would be debated in other fora, such as the Conference of Speakers of EU Parliaments and the European Parliament in The Hague in July 2004 and in the twice yearly meetings of the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments which would meet in Geneva in September 2004. He wondered if there was a possibility of having an interim conference in the intervening year, to bring the Secretaries General up to date on some of these developments. It was quite exciting what was going on in the ECPRD and with respect to IPEX.

Mr Haller admitted that there was a real problem. Mr Cameron’s proposal should be examined in depth and he hoped that it would become operational.

Mr Petricu (Senate of Romania) congratulated Mr Haller for his paper which was meeting very much his own concerns. In the context of the enlarged Europe, the activity of the Parliamentary Assembly would be affected in a very positive way. He then congratulated the Co-Directors of the ECPRD for the remarkable activity of the Centre, including the organisation of the seminar in Bucharest on Parliaments on the Net.

Mr Haller thanked Mr Petricu and the other participants and closed the discussion.

The meeting adjourned at 10 a.m.

* * * * * *

10.2.       Report on the Annual Conference of Correspondents, Berlin - 14-15 October 2004

Mr Sawicki thanked Mr Zeh, Secretary-General of the Bundestag for his invitation to hold the conference on the premises of the German Bundestag in Berlin. Traditionally the first day of the conference was reserved for a debate on an issue selected by the hosts. He therefore gave the floor to Mr Zeh.

Mr Zeh welcomed all the participants to the new Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus of the German Bundestag. He reminded those present that the Bundestag has long been active in the ECPRD network and that this was the third time the annual conference had been held in Berlin; the most recent was in 2000. He described how the ECPRD's role has changed in the present European political world after the recent enlargement of the EU and Council of Europe; how IPEX and COSAC have introduced new ways of interparliamentary cooperation in national parliaments; and he underlined the need to amend the statute of the ECPRD. In conclusion he wished the participants a successful conference.

Mr Sawicki thanked Mr Zeh for his encouraging words and agreed that all parties were working together towards the same goal. He reminded the conference that the ECPRD now had 46 member countries after the recent accession of Monaco to the Council of Europe. He then gave the floor to Professor Meyer who as a Member of the Bundestag was their representative in the European Convention.

The text of Professor Meyer's presentation on the European Constitution and the Role of National Parliaments will be available on the website.

* * * * * * * *

1. Opening of the Conference

Mr Sawicki began by thanking all the participants for their work over the past year. He then said a few words in commemoration of Jean-Luc François, who tragically died during the summer whilst on holiday in Turkey. He recalled Jean-Luc's warm personality, his enormous knowledge of parliamentary procedures and his eagerness to help his colleagues in the ECPRD. Mr Sawicki then gave the floor to Mr André Reszohazy, Jean-Luc's successor as Correspondent for the Belgian Sénat.

Mr Reszohazy said that the loss of Jean-Luc had been a real shock to everybody and he will be sorely missed.

The conference observed a minute's silence in his memory.

Mr Sawicki then welcomed all the new Correspondents:

Mr Wolfgang FISCHER, Correspondent, German Bundesrat

Mrs Monika RUMPE, Deputy Correspondent, German Bundesrat

Mrs Rodica IOVU, Correspondent, Moldova

Mr Robert VIKLICKY, Deputy Correspondent, Czech Chamber of Deputies

Mr Fernando SANTAOLALLA LOPEZ, Correspondent, Spanish Senado

Mrs Maria Rosa RIPOLLES SERRANO, who although not a new Correspondent is now Correspondent for the Spanish Congreso rather than the Senado

Mrs Anna OKRUHLICOVA, Correspondent, Slovak National Assembly

Mr Jeroen HEERKENS, Deputy Correspondent, Dutch Tweede Kamer

Mr Mehman NAMAZOV, Correspondent, Azerbaijan

Mr Borys KOLYSNICHENKO, Correspondent, Ukraine

Mr Irakli IAKOBASHVILI, Correspondent, Georgia

Mrs Eszter CZURIGA, Correspondent, Hungary

Mr André REZSOHAZY, Correspondent, Belgian Sénat

Mr Jean-Pierre BLOCH, Correspondent, French Assemblée Nationale

Mr Ingvar MATTSON, Correspondent, Swedish Riksdag

Mr Thomas KOPP, Deputy Correspondent, German Bundestag

He also welcomed Mr Thomas Grunert from the European Parliament who was standing in for Mr Bo Jensen, the future Co-Director, who was unable to attend the conference.

The draft agenda was then adopted.

2. Draft minutes of the Annual Conference of Correspondents, Strasbourg, 10 October 2003

The minutes were approved without amendment.

3. Election of a new member of the Executive Committee

Mr Sawicki announced that Mrs Holt's three year term as member of the Executive Committee had come to an end and thanked her for all her work.

He reminded the conference that Mrs Zatkálikovà had retired at the beginning of the year and that consequently the Executive Committee had asked Mrs Glavnik (Slovenia, National Assembly) to replace her on the Executive Committee. He asked the Correspondents to formally agree to Mrs Glavnik serving on the Executive until the end of Mrs Zatkálikovà's mandate, i.e. one more year.

Mrs Holt thanked Mr Sawicki for his kind words and promised to remain active as a Correspondent. She proposed Mr Clements (UK, House of Commons) as the new member of the Executive Committee.

Both these proposals were accepted by the Correspondents.

4. Replacement of Mr Dick Toornstra as Co-Director of the ECPRD

Mr Toornstra had recently addressed a letter to all the Correspondents announcing his departure from the ECPRD.

He assured the conference that the nine years of his co-directorship had been a particularly interesting and instructive time. To his mind one of the most important events had been the former PECO countries becoming full EU-members. The ECPRD had played a key role in assisting these "new parliaments" and he was proud of the real spirit of openness amongst colleagues. The network of professionals that was the ECPRD had also fostered many personal relations.

He particularly thanked Mr Sawicki for his cooperation and friendship which he had valued.

He informed the conference that his team would also be leaving the ECPRD secretariat. He thanked Mrs Jackson for her assistance and for the organisation of ECPRD seminars over more than ten years and added that she was leaving the ECPRD secretariat with great regret.

Mrs Coppolecchia he considered as the living memory of the ECPRD since she had been involved in its activities from the very beginning. He thanked her for her work as Co-Secretary and webmaster and particularly for coping with an explosive number of comparative requests.

He also thanked Mr Heinrich for the support he continued to give in his second term as Co-Secretary.

Mr Toornstra explained that as a result of enlargement the European Parliament was investing more formally in relations with national parliaments. The former Division for Relations with National Parliaments had thus become a Directorate with Mr Jensen as its Director. It was appropriate therefore that Mr Jensen should take over responsibility for the ECPRD and become its Co-Director.

Mr Jensen has worked in the European Parliament for many years, first in a political group, then as Head of the President's Office and now as a Director in the Parliament's secretariat.

Mr Toornstra passed on Mr Jensen's regrets at not being able to attend the conference and his greetings to the Correspondents.

He concluded by wishing the ECPRD good fortune and promised that he would remain in contact.

Mr Sawicki said that unfortunately it was the role of civil servants to obey and thanked Mr Toornstra warmly for all his work! He also thanked Mrs Jackson and Mrs Coppolecchia and regretted that the whole Brussels-based team would be leaving the ECPRD. He wondered how the secretariat could continue to run effectively.

Mr Grunert intervened by stating that effectively the new role of the European Parliament in interparliamentary relations had made it necessary to create a new structure which also includes IPEX and COSAC. He was already acquainted with the various activities of the ECPRD.

Mrs Holt, on behalf of the Executive Committee, thanked Mr Toornstra for his guidance and political sense. Thanks to his personal commitment and the efficiency of the secretariat in Brussels, the ECPRD network had made enormous progress in the exchange of information. She considered that the role of the Secretaries-General was crucial in the future of the ECPRD.

Mrs Calinoiu thanked Mr Toornstra and listed the benefits she derived from the ECPRD network. She added that she would be pleased to host next year's conference in Bucharest.

Mr Palanza paid tribute to Mr Toornstra and was afraid that his departure would put at risk the effectiveness of the ECPRD. He underlined Mr Toornstra's spirit of generosity and the passion, energy and determination with which the three members of the Brussels team had carried out their work. He urged the Correspondents to invest as much as possible as ECPRD must continue.

Mr Clements also thanked the Brussels team for their essential input and enthusiasm for the ECPRD.

Mrs Ripollés Serrano expressed her thanks and the hope that the ECPRD could continue its activities in the same convivial manner.

Mr Viegas Abreu told the conference that he had officially invited Mr Toornstra to participate at the last ECPRD seminar of the year in Lisbon.

Mr Sawicki concluded by informing the conference that a short farewell celebration would take place after lunch.

5. Adoption of the ECPRD Activity Report 2003-2004

Mr Sawicki said that the activities to October 2003 had already been discussed at the last annual conference in Strasbourg. The information was also available in the annex to the Activity Report as well as on the website. He then reported on the seminars which had taken place since October 2003:

Brussels, 24 October 2003: meeting of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group.

Rome, 30-31 October 2003: Parliamentary Administrations and Legislative Cooperation.

Nicosia, 5-7 November 2003: meeting of the ICT Working Group.

Brussels, 5 March 2004: Eurovoc meeting.

Rome, 12 March 2004 : meeting of the Executive.

Warsaw, 25-26 March 2004: The Role of Legislative Services in the Legislative Process.

Sofia, 16-17 April 2004: meeting of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group.

Bratislava, 22-23 April 2004: Parliamentary Public Relations.

Ljubljana, 27-28 May 2004: Security in Parliaments.

Mr Sawicki informed the conference that there had been a total of 460 participants at these seminars, excluding the Executive meetings, from 25 different countries.

Seminars for the rest of year are:

Strasbourg, 22-23 October 2004: Meeting of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group.

London, 4-5 November 2004: Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services: meeting users' needs.

Lisbon, 17-19 November 2004: meeting of the ICT Working Group.

Mr Sawicki commented on the marked improvement in the preparation of conferences and seminars, the quality of the speakers and the high participation. He added that discussion on the amendments to the Statute would include the development of ECPRD seminars.

Comparative Requests

Mr Sawicki reported there had been an important increase in the number of requests and replies from ECPRD members, although unfortunately this meant an additional workload for Mrs Coppolocchia. An overview of statistics for the period September 2003 to September 2004 would be available on the website.

Mr Toornstra regretted that despite the guidelines and the importance of the comparative requests, the parliament/chamber which had launched them almost never sent a summary of the replies received to the secretariat.

Mrs Okruhlikova pointed out that it was sometimes difficult to prepare a summary in English. Mr Toornstra assured her however that a summary in the mother tongue of the parliament/chamber was perfectly acceptable and that the summary could always be translated if necessary.

Mr Marcelli emphasised the relevance of comparative studies for parliamentary research services and requested that the guidelines be updated.

Website

Mr Toornstra informed the conference that no important new developments were currently envisaged to the website.

IPEX

Mr Toornstra told the conference that he would remain in charge of IPEX until the Stockholm meeting of IPEX Correspondents in late January/beginning February 2005. On 21 October a meeting of the technical working party was scheduled in Brussels. The recommendations of this working party would probably be approved by the IPEX steering committee next month and the first operational launch was foreseen for May/June 2005. Eighteen parliaments/chambers were now participating in IPEX, although unfortunately not all of their web pages were up and running despite them having been eager to participate. ECPRD was very much involved in the running of the project as the host and coordinator of the IPEX web pages. Nevertheless, each parliament/chamber remained totally in control of their own contribution which made it essential that they should all nominate an IPEX correspondent. Mr Toornstra was confident that IPEX would become fully operational in 2005.

The Activity Report for 2003-2004 was approved. A paper copy of the Report would be printed and distributed at a later date.

6. Programme of Activities 2005 - 2006

Calendar of meetings/seminars for 2005

Mr Sawicki informed the Correspondents of those seminars/conferences planned for next year.

Meeting of the ICT Working Group - it had to be decided whether this meeting would take place in Ljubljana, Tallinn or Copenhagen.

Meeting of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group - the autumn meeting would take place in Brussels. The Working Group would decide the venue of the spring meeting when they met in Strasbourg next week.

Parli@ments on the Net - programmed for 2005 (takes place every two years). To date there has been no invitation.

Madrid Seminar - no further indication as yet.

Annual Conference of Correspondents - to be hosted by the Romanian parliament in Bucharest in October.

Calendar of meetings/seminars for 2006

Annual Conference of Correspondents - to be hosted by the British Parliament in London in October.

Proposal of a seminar to be hosted by the Parliament of Bosnia/Herzegovina

Mr Sawicki asked the Correspondents for their comments and further proposals especially for 2005.

Mr Siplane regretted that Estonia would not be able to host the ICT meeting next year.

Mrs Holt pointed out that it was difficult to coordinate the dates for Working Group meetings if the coordinator was not present. She suggested that in future both coordinators should be officially invited to the annual conference.

Mrs Okruhlicova regretted that it was impossible for the Slovak Parliament to host any seminar for the next two years.

Mr Torbiörn (coordinator of the Macroeconomic Research Working Group) reiterated that the autumn meeting would be hosted by the Council of Europe next week in Strasbourg. He also confirmed that next year's autumn meeting would take place in Brussels. It was his intention to raise certain administrative issues for discussion at next week's meeting and also the possibility of only holding one meeting each year.

Mrs Glavnik said that the Slovenian Parliament could host an ICT Working Group meeting either in 2005 or 2006, but coordination was needed with the Danish Folketinget.

Mrs Ripollés Serrano proposed that the Spanish Congreso could host a seminar on Relations between National Parliaments and the European Parliament, probably in September 2005.

She asked for clarification between the subjects discussed at ICT Working Group meetings and those at Parli@ments on the Net, since to her it seemed logical to combine the two meetings.

Mr Clements and Mr Blatt both agreed with this analysis. They felt that the subjects and discussions in these two seminars were now very similar.

Mrs Nawrocka offered on behalf of the Polish Senate to host a seminar on Cooperation amongst European Parliaments in Warsaw in 2006.

Mr Palanza said that the Italian Camera dei Deputati could host a seminar between the end of 2005 and February 2006. The subject would be something to do with parliamentary administration.

Mr Bloch told the conference that the French Assemblee Nationale could possibly host a seminar in Paris, but not before 2006. He would confirm this to Mr Sawicki as soon as possible.

Mrs Nistor said that the Romanian Chamber of Deputies would assist in the preparation of the annual conference in Bucharest next year following the invitation from her colleague Mrs Calinoiu.

With regard to the distinction between the subjects debated in the ICT Working Group and Parli@ments on the Net, Mr Toornstra explained that previously this had been very clear. The former was a technical meeting between IT technicians and engineers, whilst the latter concentrated on the social and philosophical components of new technologies and e-democracy. However, the subjects of both meetings were now overlapping and there may well be cause to combine them and to organise a conference on alternate years which focused on more technical or conceptual aspects. This, together with the role of the coordinator, was something for the Executive to discuss.

The conference then adjourned for lunch.

* * * * * * * *

After lunch Mr Torbiörn paid tribute to Mr Toornstra, Hanneke and Dorne by singing a song he had composed, harmoniously accompanied by the Correspondents.

* * * * * * * *

7. Working Group on the review of the ECPRD Statute

Mr Sawicki referred to a memorandum which had been sent to the Correspondents before the conference on this subject and outlined the background to the Working Group.

Mr Marcelli agreed that it was time to review the Statute as the competencies of the ECPRD were not always clearly defined. The Statute seemed to be too limiting with regard to the activities of the ECPRD and it should not be forgotten that the website was an important channel of information for these. Mr Marcelli requested a better definition of Article 8 to include coordination and information between the Correspondents and the Coordinators of the working groups. He also recommended promoting the exchange of parliamentary staff.

Mrs Glavnik thought that Article 1 should be broadened to include more exchange of information and to make reference to IPEX. With regard to Article 8 she would prefer the ECPRD to have a bigger role in organising more seminars for more participants.

Mr Bloch pointed out that the nature of a Statute was always limiting as it was impossible to include every detail. In his opinion the problem or relations with regional parliaments should be clarified.

Mr Clements thought that the subject of regional parliaments was more political and should be taken at the level of Secretaries-General, although he was in favour of providing regional parliaments with passive access to the website. He also commented on the high cost of organising a seminar which for him excluded the possibility of more. On the subject of Deputy Correspondents he felt that their nomination should not be obligatory but should rather depend on the structure of the chamber/parliament. On the whole he considered that the ECPRD was working very well.

Mr Santaolalla was reluctant to open the ECPRD to regional parliaments.

Mr Davies considered that the wording of the Statute should not be over specific. Reference to IPEX should definitely be made and it was a good idea to formalise the participation of the coordinators of working groups at the annual conferences. He was in favour of giving regional parliaments a limited access to the website.

Mr Sawicki stressed the responsibility of the Working Group on the Reform of the Statute to make a proposal to the Secretaries-General which reflected the views of the Correspondents. In his opinion the scope of Article 1 was already wide enough as it included all fields of parliamentary information as well as legislative topics.

Mr Van der Hulst agreed with Mr Sawicki. He thought that cooperation with regional parliaments would be of no practical use to the ECPRD; this was something which should be coordinated at national parliament level. He did however feel that passive access to the website was acceptable.

Mr Sawicki proposed the abolition of the working groups as they stood at the moment and to replace them with regular seminars overseen by the same manager/coordinator who would report directly to the Executive Committee.

Mrs Ripollés warned against a committee approach and underlined that each parliament/chamber was free to decide its contribution to the ECPRD.

Mr Toornstra concluded the debate by stating that it was obvious that after ten years in force the Statute was in need of discussion, but that changes were not obligatory. For him Article 1 was not an obstacle to the ECPRD's expanded activities. As the next meeting of Secretaries-General would be in 2006 he considered there was ample time for discussion and asked the Correspondents to send their propositions to Mr Sawicki.

Guidelines for comparative requests

Mr Sawicki requested that all comments and proposals be forwarded to him.

Mr Palanza had prepared a summary of proposals following the seminar in Rome in October 2003 and asked Mrs Coppolecchia to make it available to the Correspondents.

Cooperation and Coordination between national and regional parliaments

A debate on cooperation and coordination between national and regional Parliaments, introduced by Dr Andreas Maurer, followed. The text of the draft evaluation of the replies to the questionnaire (to date only 36%) will be made available on the website. Mr Toornstra asked those participants who had not yet replied to the questionnaire to send them as soon as possible directly to Mr Maurer, in order that the evaluation may be completed.

8. Any other business

Mr Sawicki concluded the conference by thanking its German hosts for their generous hospitality and the Correspondents for their input.

He invited the Correspondents to the next annual conference which will be hosted by the Romanian parliament in Bucharest next October.

* * * * * *

10.3.       Report on the Annual Conference of ECPRD Correspondents, Bucharest, 14 October 2005

1.        Opening of the Conference

Mr Wojciech SAWICKI opened the meeting by thanking the Romanian Parliament for hosting this annual Conference of Correspondents on the premises of the Parliamentary Building - the second biggest building in the world - and welcomed newcomers to the meeting:

-.Mr Bo Manderup JENSEN; new ECPRD Co-Director (Director for Relations with National Parliaments, European Parliament);

- Mrs Christiana SOLOMONIDOU, CYPRUS (Deputy-Correspondent);

- Mrs Azra BRANKOVIC, BOSNIA/HERZEGOVINA (Deputy-Correspondent);

- Mrs Danuta KORZENIOWSKA, POLAND SEJM (replacing Mr Staskiewicz);

- Mrs Danuta ŁUKASZ, POLAND SENAT (replacing Mrs Nawrocka);

- Mr André Van der MEER, NETHERLANDS TWEEDE KAMER, (Correspondent);

- Mrs Siiri SILLAJOE, ESTONIA (Deputy-Correspondent);

- Mrs Ana IVAS, SLOVENIA NATIONAL COUNCIL (Deputy-Correspondent);

- Mr Dusan STRUS, SLOVENIA NATIONAL COUNCIL (Correspondent);

- Mr Pedro VALENTE, PORTUGAL (Correspondent as from 1st November);

- Mr Pera HANSEN, DENMARK;

- Mr Carlo LINDEN, LUXEMBOURG (Correspondent);

- Mr Christian KOVACZ, HUNGARY;

- Mr Arthur GRIGORIAN, ARMENIA (replacing Mrs Arakelian).

Mr Sawicki informed the meeting that this Conference was the last ECPRD event with the participation of Mrs Elise HOLT (Denmark, Correspondent) who was retiring at the end of the month. The floor thanked her for all her work, for having organised various seminars and for her dedication to ECPRD, including as a member of the Executive Committee, and ended by saying that her warm personality would be missed by all.

The draft agenda was adopted.

2.        Draft minutes of the Annual Conference of Correspondents, Berlin 14-15 October 2004

The minutes were approved without amendment.

3.        Election of a new member of the Executive Committee

Mr Sawicki announced that this year the term of mandate of Mrs Anna Zatkalikova (replaced last year in Berlin by Mrs Natasa Glavnik) had come to an end. He reminded participants that a temporary replacement had been made before in the Executive Committee, with an official election afterwards. He proposed therefore that Mrs Glavnik should be officially elected as a new member.

The floor elected Mrs Glavnik as a new member of the Executive Committee.

Mr Sawicki then proposed, on the basis of a better geographical representation and in view of the new statutes which - after adoption in May 2006 - would possibly enlarge the composition of the Executive Committee, that another member should be co-opted to the Executive: Mr Borys Kolisnychenko, the Correspondent of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Mr Rob Clements supported this proposal which would ensure a better geographical balance between EU and non-EU member countries in the ECPRD, and in view of the likely future enlargement of the Executive Committee.

Mr Sandro Palanza agreed with the enlargement of the Executive Committee.

The participants accepted the proposal and welcomed Mr. Kolisnychenko as a co-opted member of the Executive Committee.

4.        Adoption of the ECPRD Activity Report 2004-2005

Mr Sawicki introduced the Activity Report, reminding Correspondents that activities for 2003-2004 had already been discussed and that the discussion today should cover only the period 2004-2005. He underlined that the Activity Report would not be adopted at the current meeting. This was the task of the Secretaries General. Therefore, the Activity Report would be presented at the meeting of the Secretaries General in May 2006 in Tallinn for its official endorsement. The role of the Correspondents was to check whether it fully reflected the various ECPRD activities, to fill in any eventual gaps and to make comments.

He said that compared with previous years:

a) the number of seminars was lower than normal: after the Annual Conference in Berlin last October, there had been only two meetings of the Macroeconomic Research WG, one meeting of the Information and Communication Technology Working Group and the seminar on Parliamentary Libraries in London. He thanked the hosting parliaments for their work and good organisation of the ECPRD events. He stated that the current year had been a year of transition and hoped that a "normal calendar" could be foreseen in the future.

b) the number of comparative requests was increasing steadily. It had become the main ECPRD activity, and sometimes created practical problems in answering all the requests in time. He underlined that some parliaments/chambers suffered from a lack of staff, lack of resources and that there were other priorities because of ongoing internal parliamentary activities. A spirit of goodwill and cooperation remained the basis for the comparative requests!

Mr Marcelli intervened by stating that the growing number of requests showed the considerable success of and interest in such comparative work. He underlined the importance of the archive of comparative requests and requested more final summaries.

Mr Bloch intervened to inform the meeting that his service regularly had to pass requests on to other services, and asked the participants to make an effort not to use comparative requests for topics which could be answered relatively easily by using other resources such as the Internet and in-house documentation services. He also wished to improve the Guidelines for comparative requests (to be discussed later).

Mr Van Der Meer suggested that the Activity Report could further develop information on the meetings of the Working Groups.

No further comments on the Draft Activity Report 2004-2005.

5.        Programme of Activities (end of 2005, 2006 and 2007

a) For 2005

The Madrid Seminar on “Technical Issues Pertaining to the Relations between the European Parliament and Parliaments of the EU Member States” will take place on 27-28 October 2005. There were 35 participants registered to date. Mr Sawicki reminded the meeting of the current reimbursement procedure for participants coming from specific countries and insisted that more use should be made of this possibility.

b) For 2006

Mr Sawicki asked the floor to examine the provisional calendar and to give their initial reactions.

- EUROVOC meeting - hosted by the European Parliament in Brussels, spring 2006, date to be confirmed;

- MACROECONOMIC WG meeting - in Sarajevo, end of May/beginning of June, exact date to be confirmed. Mrs Slavnic asked whether it would be possible to receive financial assistance for the organisation of the meeting. Mr Sawicki responded by saying that financial support was always possible but that there were formalities in place for securing this assistance.

- POLAND Sejm - Seminar on Legislative Observatory - Impossible to host this seminar in 2006, to be postponed to 2007.

- POLAND Senat: - Seminar on Supranational Parliamentary and Inter-parliamentary Assemblies - date confirmed: 8-9 May 2006. A questionnaire has already been sent out.

Mr Jensen added that this subject had been proposed at the Budapest Conference of Speakers, and then taken up by the Danish Folketing.

Mr Sawicki requested all national parliaments to respond to the questionnaire and confirm their participation as early as possible.

- TALLINN - meeting of the Secretaries General, in the framework of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments. As this body endorses the ECPRD Activity Report, this event is added to the Calendar for information. Dates: 30-31 May 2006.

- ROME - Camera dei Deputati: Seminar on Exchange of National Legislative Information, Date: July (exact dates to be decided). This seminar has to be properly coordinated with the postponed seminar of the Polish Sejm in 2007.

- VILNIUS - Information and Communication Technology WG meeting - 5-6 October 2006.

- LONDON -12-14 October 2006, Annual Conference of Correspondents.

Mr Clements expressed his concern that, with an expansion of seminars on a wide range of topics, the ECPRD’s roots in parliamentary research and information services would get lost! He hoped that a seminar on Parliamentary Research Services couild take place in the near future.

- PARIS - National Assembly - Seminar on the Role of the Parliamentary Administration in the Functioning of the Parliament - Dates: one full and one half day in November 2006, exact dates to be decided.

Mr Sawicki asked whether there were any other proposals to host a Seminar.

Mr Viegas asked whether there would be another meeting of "Parli@ments on the Net".

Mr Sawicki responded that the last meeting had taken place in Romania in 2003. Mr Viegas felt strongly that it was time to organise another "Parli@ments on the Net" conference as there had been considerable changes in the internet world, and added he would try organising it in Portugal in autumn 2006. He would keep correspondents informed.

c) For 2007

LJUBLJANA - ICT WG meeting - or possibly Parli@ments on the Net. If not possible in 2007, then in 2008.

Mrs Glavnik added that a discussion should be held on whether to hold Parli@ments on the Net as well as the meetings of the ICT working group every second year.

Mr Pera Hansen said that the Danish parliament agreed with holding the ICT WG meetings every 2 years, and agreed that it had to be clarified how best to organise these meetings.

Mr Sawicki proposed discussing this topic later, at point 7, after the election of the Co-ordinator of the ICT working group.

BRUSSELS, Belgian Federal Parliament - Seminar on Relations between Parliament and the Judiciary, autumn 2007.

WARSAW, Polish Sejm, Seminar on Legislative Observatory (postponed from 2006)

BERNE, Swiss Parliament - Seminar on Press Services in Parliaments, possibly April/May 2007, or autumn 2007.

Mr Frischknecht added that he would prepare a questionnaire in due time.

Mr Laporte asked for clarifications of this topic. The seminar would not discuss public relations of parliaments, but the provision of press articles to MPs.

PRAGUE, Czech National Assembly

Mr Sosna proposed holding a Seminar on Transparency of Parliamentary Proceedings, to be confirmed.

Mr Kolisnychenko stated that the calendar for 2006 and 2007 was already quite full and added this could create a problem for his parliament participating in all these seminars given the present rules for reimbursement.

Mr Sawicki replied that, unhappily, these rules could not be changed immediately, but that both the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe would provide as much support as possible.

Mr Van der Meer felt that two topics, the Transparency Seminar (Prague) and the Press service Seminar (Berne), could fit very well into a wider discussion, in the context of e-parliaments.

Mr Sawicki did not agree and replied that e-parliaments and parliamentary internet services were the final and technical steps of earlier decisions and activities of parliaments, in particular about how they should be brought to the public, while parliamentary transparency was very different.

Mr Palanza informed correspondents that the Camera dei Deputati was currently carrying out research into ", "How to get Parliament on to the front page", and how parliamentary activities are covered by the media. He did not see this discussion as part of parli@ments on the Net.

Mr Sawicki asked Mr Sosna and Mr Frischknecht to outline the aims of the proposed seminars next year.

LUXEMBURG - October 2007

Mr Linden informed the meeting that the Luxemburgish Parliament would like to host a Seminar on the subject "E-enablement of Parliamentarians; How to provide MPs best access to the parliament on the internet"

Mr Sawicki thanked participants for all their proposals and closed the discussion on future events by asking participants to show some flexibility with dates, as it would be very difficult to organise all these seminars in autumn 2007.

6.        ECPRD Statutes

Mr Sawicki recalled the steps taken by the Statutory Working Group, created by the Secretaries General of PACE and EP in May 2004 in Strasbourg. The Working Group consists of Secretaries General of 5 national Parliaments plus the two ECPRD Co-Directors. They held meetings in October 2004 and May 2005, the outcome of which was a draft text included in the document (dated July 2005) sent to all Correspondents, together with explanatory comments and with a request to have this discussed with the Secretaries General concerned.

The draft text was prepared in a way that the Secretaries General could adopt it without long discussion at the Tallinn meeting in May 2006. Correspondents had now the opportunity to submit amendments to the draft text, which might be included in a final draft version to be forwarded to all Secretaries General before the Tallinn meeting.

Mr Sawicki indicated that 3 documents were available: the draft text of the Statutes as prepared by the Statutory Working Group, the explanatory comments to that draft text (both dated May 2005) and finally the position of the Executive Committee on amendments proposed so far by Correspondents. The floor was open to comments.

On the name of the ECPRD

Mr Sosna reminded Correspondents that the name of the organisation had been discussed on various occasions but an agreement on an alternative name had not been reached.

Mr Marcelli agreed that, whilst keeping Research and Documentation in the name was quite lengthy, any change could be interpreted as being symbolic, so he preferred to keep the name as it was.

The participants decided not to change the name.

Article 1

Mr Davies requested a new wording: “legislative studies” instead of “legislation”.

Mrs Ripollés wanted to include "comparative law" and "parliamentary law" in the wording.

Mr Laporte thanked Mr Sawicki and the team for the transparency and all the work done, and pointed out that, since ECPRD was not a body of parliamentary cooperation in legislative matters, it would not be appropriate to include "legislation" in the wording. He proposed including "to strengthen close cooperation amongst parliamentary services" instead of "parliamentary administration".

Mr Santaollalla preferred “parliamentary services” alone, as otherwise the proposed wording would be too long.

Mr Sawicki closed the discussion and would present the following proposals to the Statutory Working Group:

“The Conference proposed to clearly underline that the ECPRD operates in the field of co-operation among parliamentary services (and not among MPs). Two variants were proposed for a consideration by the Statutory Group.

One correspondent suggested deleting the word “good” from Article 1.1, saying that the ECPRD should exchange any practice rather than only the good ones. There was not much support for this proposal.

One correspondent suggested replacing the word “legislation” by “legislative studies”, saying that the consideration of legislation by MPs is not a field in which the staff of parliaments can co-operate through the ECPRD. There was not much support for this proposal.

The Conference also proposed to delete the words “methods and projects” from Article 1.2, arguing that the current wording suggests that there are specific, albeit unnamed, methods and projects which should be promoted within the context of ICT. The view of the Conference was that a general statement of aims which supported the promotion of ICT was more appropriate.”

Article 4

Mr Sawicki said that the amendment proposed by Mr Santaollalla could create problems as the meeting of the Secretaries General was not structured, and insisted on not changing the text. This was also the position of the Executive Committee.

Mr Laporte went back to Article 1.3 and asked whether the wording "cooperation with other networks as IPEX" did mean another dimension of cooperation, since actually IPEX was just hosted on ECPRD's site.

Mr Sawicki explained that the idea behind this was to establish cooperation and exchanges between existing networks, in order not to duplicate activities.

Mr Jensen clarified that "networks" did not mean only electronic networks, and insisted on cooperation between existing networks to ensure unnecessary duplication of activities.

Article 5.2

It was decided to delete the reference to Deputy Correspondents as it was up to the Correspondent to ensure direct access to the Secretary General.

Article 7

After a discussion (Mrs Rumpe, Mr Valente, and Mr Sawicki) on the "quorum" and on the duration of the mandate, the Conference proposed to review the question of the length of term of office of members of the Executive Committee by introducing three variants: three, four or five years, to be decided finally by the Statutory Group. In the case of a shorter term (three or four years), an amendment on the possibility of re-election was proposed by one correspondent. This latter amendment has not been discussed by the Conference.

Furthermore, the Conference proposed, in view of the likely enlargement of the Executive Committee, to introduce a rule on its quorum and on voting methods.

Article 8

Answering a question by Mr Laporte on the reason behind the new wording "the Co-Directors may also be Correspondents", Mr Sawicki explained that this was in order to give more freedom to the Secretaries General of PACE and the European Parliament to name a Co-Director as well as a Correspondent. He gave as an example the recent nomination of Mr Jensen as new Co-Director: Mr Jensen is Director of the Directorate for Relations with National Parliaments not directly dealing with the research or documentation services, while one of the main tasks of Correspondents is to forward and answer the comparative requests.

Article 9

Mr Sawicki informed Correspondents that he had received many comments and amendments concerning this Article which dealt with the key issue of the Centre’s working methods, including working groups. The main points of discussion were the respective roles of the Executive Committee and of the Conference of Correspondents.

The Statutory Group proposed to replace the current formula of permanent working groups by providing in the Statutes that the Executive Committee could appoint coordinators in areas requiring continuous activity. The coordinators would be responsible for preparing events (seminars) in their respective fields and would assure the continuity of the work. The number of coordinators should not be pre-established, as it would depend on needs and requests. This approach would provide greater flexibility and better reflect the current situation, as “working groups” have so far never had formal memberships.

He added that some members of the Statutory Group noted that, while introducing the possibility of appointing coordinators and writing this into the Statutes, the creation of a limited number of ad hoc (temporary) working groups to deal with specific subjects should also be possible.

Such ad hoc working groups should be ‘project-oriented’, limited in time and scope, have clear terms of reference and a fixed composition. In principle, they should be composed of representatives of parliaments interested in a given project or subject matter.

A considerable number of Correspondents had suggested that decisions on the nomination of co-ordinators and the creation of ad-hoc working groups should be taken by the Conference of Correspondents rather than by the Executive Committee. Mr Sawicki informed the meeting that the Executive Committee had discussed these proposals and was ready to endorse them.

Mr Marcelli requested that comparative requests should be included under Para 1 as these were one of the main activities.

Mr Sawicki clarified the point that even though the co-ordinators were invited to participate in the Annual Conference of the Correspondents, he saw no specific need to add it in the Statute.

Mr Jensen proposed to change "co-ordinator" into "rapporteur", a person to be appointed to report on the outcome of the meeting, and added that an option to renew the mandate of the co-ordinator should stay open.

A short discussion then followed on the difference between the tasks of an ad-hoc and a "fixed" working-group (Mr Clements), and more specifically in relation to the ICT Working Group (Mr Van der Meer).

Mr Sawicki said that as far as the ICT Working Group was concerned, there was a co-ordinator plus a group of persons who attended meetings on an ad-hoc basis. This group should not be considered as a fixed group, with formal membership, and that it was merely because of the subject of the discussions that the participants often happened to be the same in this working group. He also underlined that the only formal members in the ECPRD were the Correspondents appointed by Secretaries General of national parliaments and it was only in this context that the word “membership” could be used.

Mrs Rumpe agreed with the proposal that it was up to the Correspondents and not to the Executive Committee to have the final decision on co-ordinators and working groups.

Mrs Ripollés agreed that the appointment of co-ordinators and creation of ad-hoc working groups should be decided by the Annual Conference of Correspondents and not by the Executive Committee.

Mr Laporte informed the floor that in his opinion Articles 9.3 and 9.4 could really stay as they were; his only remark on Article 9.1 was to add "these guidelines are approved by the Conference of Correspondents".

Mr Sawicki proposed to add the following two suggestions in the draft text for the Statutory Working Group:

      a) Coordinators nominated in agreement with the Secretaries General concerned;

      b) ad-hoc working group composition to be agreed with the Secretaries General concerned.

Mr Laporte underlined - regarding Article 9.4 - that any member of a parliamentary administration could participate in ECPRD activities on the implicit mandate of his/her Secretary General, so it was unnecessary to include "following approval of the Secretary General".

After a short discussion, the floor decided to delete "on agreement of the Secretary General"

Referring to Article 9.1, Mr Palanza proposed to include "creation and development of appropriate databases", as he felt that the aspect of national legislative databases was not sufficiently taken into consideration.

Mr Sawicki replied that databases were a tool, the same as a website, and said that he would leave this matter open for a decision by the Statutory Working Group. He summarised the points to be proposed to the Statutory Working Group:

“The Conference proposed substantial modifications to Article 9. Correspondents were convinced that the text as agreed by the Statutory Group gave the impression that major ECPRD decisions were taken solely by the Executive Committee without the Conference of Correspondents being able to intervene.

As one of the correspondents said: “The democratic concern to entrust the decisions to the Conference of Correspondents and the interests of efficiency might not always be reconcilable. Still, democracy should not systematically be penalised in the tricky juggling of these two considerations. It therefore appears desirable for decisions to be shared between the Conference of Correspondents and the Executive Committee.”

The correspondents shared this point of view and proposed to modify Articles 9.1, 9.3 and 9.4 accordingly. They also proposed to define the length of the term of office of Co-ordinators (three years, renewable) and to limit the duration of ad-hoc working groups to a maximum of three years.

One correspondent suggested introducing the words “creation and development of appropriate databases” in Article 9.1.”

Mr Van der Meer made a final point that, as the composition of the Executive Committee aimed at geographical balance, there should also be a mention of the level of knowledge/resource base of Parliaments.

7.        Working Groups and Coordinators

ICT- Working Group:

Mr Sawicki informed the meeting that the papers concerning the question of the coordinator of the ICT Working Group were available: the Memorandum of the two Co-directors sent to the participants of the ICT meeting in Lisbon, the Declaration of the participants and finally a letter sent by Mr Piet van Rijn.

During 2003 and 2004, both the Co-directors had been concerned at the lack of reporting by the ICT-coordinator to the ECPRD as well as his contacts with external commercial lobbying through the ICT Working Group, the reason why they had decided to send the Memorandum. Unfortunately, neither of the Co-directors had been present at the meeting to explain the Memorandum, and participants had reacted angrily and responded by presenting a Declaration.

At its meeting in London (4 March 2005, the minutes are available on the ECPRD website), the Executive Committee decided that the Co-directors would discuss the matter with Mr Van Rijn in order to find a solution. This meeting took place in Brussels on 30 March 2005 and it was suggested that, as in the Dutch parliament Mr Van Rijn was responsible for E-parliament, he could be nominated as coordinator of a new group on E-parliament within the ECPRD. If agreed it would be approved by the Correspondents during this Bucharest Conference. In May 2005 Mr Van Rijn accepted this proposal, in agreement with his Secretary General, but later, and after having read the minutes of the meeting of the Executive Committee, he reacted in an opposite way (see copy of letter annexed /distributed). The Executive Committee took note of his decision and decided at their meeting in Brussels (9 September 2005) to propose the nomination of Mr Joao Viegas-Abreu as new coordinator of the ICT Working Group (minutes available on the ECPRD website), a nomination fully supported by his Secretary General.

Mr Van der Meer said that he had been participating in the ICT working group for 8 years, that the coordinator - especially of an ICT Working Group - had to be very strong and that external companies were needed for ICT-exchange at parliamentary level. He went on to state that he, as well as the whole group in Lisbon, had been very surprised by the Memorandum and therefore their immediate reaction had been very strong.

Mr Jensen intervened by proposing to close the discussion on the history of the Memorandum, to look to the future, and to move on to the nomination of the new coordinator.

Mr Laporte reacted by requesting that the two different aspects of the question should not be mixed up: first the activities and working procedure of the Working Group and secondly the way the whole question has been treated. The problem was clear and obvious and this was the reason why there were all the discussions and amendments on Article 9 of the draft Statute. But there had been a lack of information. At the Berlin Annual Conference in October 2004 the Correspondents had been discussing the ICT Working Group and its activities (see the records of the meeting, available on the ECPRD website).

Then, one month later, this Memorandum appeared, with quite "tyrannical" wording, and without any explanation from the Co-directors. Three months later, there was the decision of the Executive Committee on the co-ordinator of the ICT Working Group. The main problem was not the decision in itself but the way in which the question was handled.

Mrs Slavnic underlined the importance of outside contacts in relation to technical knowledge, even though ECPRD was not the best place for commercial external lobbying.

Mr Viegas Abreu said that he had kept a distance from the Lisbon Memorandum and insisted that a member of the Executive participated in future meetings of the ICT Working Group. He informed the floor that he had been preparing the Lisbon meeting completely on his own, without any support from the former co-ordinator.

Mr Sawicki thanked Mr Viegas Abreu for his explanations and stated that it was exactly the lack of coordination by the former coordinator that had led to the formulation of the Memorandum by Co-Directors who, according to the ECPRD Statute, "are responsible for the management of all activities of the ECPRD". He continued to say that in future, the Coordinators should participate in the Annual Conference of Correspondents and, if need be, in the meetings of the Executive Committee. He then proposed to nominate Mr Viegas Abreu as new coordinator of the ICT Working Group.

The participants agreed and Mr Viegas Abreu was nominated as coordinator of the ICT WG.

Mr Van der Hulst suggested there may be a need to create an ad-hoc working group (using the possible new Article 9.3 of the Statute), on parliamentary procedure and parliamentary law, as about 50% of comparative requests were on this subject.

Mr Sawicki replied that as soon the Statutory Working Group had finalised the new draft Statute, the text would immediately be forwarded to all Correspondents and to the Secretaries General. He asked that Correspondents should discuss the draft text with their Secretaries General and send their possible amendments in time for them to be included in the final draft text. This was the only way to have the new Statute adopted during the Tallinn meeting of Secretaries General; otherwise the revision of the Statute would take further 2 years. The Tallinn meeting will be relatively short and there would be no time for a long discussion and drafting of new amendments. Therefore, the new text had to be very well prepared.

He finally requested the Correspondents to attend the next Annual Conference in London, (October 2006) with proposals for areas where co-ordinators should be nominated.

8.        Guidelines for comparative requests

Mr Sawicki said that there was a great need to adapt the current guidelines and proposed that, in the same way as for the text of the new Statute, all Correspondents should forward their comments directly to him. The Executive Committee would prepare a final draft for the new guidelines, to be discussed and approved by the Correspondents at the next Annual Conference in London, October 2006.

Mr Palanza added that simplifying the questionnaires would bring in better replies and a better use of the archived requests, and that the standard questionnaire had to be followed by all the responding chambers/parliaments.

Mr Clements reminded the floor that the whole activity of the comparative requests and their replies was on a voluntary basis, and that the resources in the internal administrations were quite different. It was therefore crucial to always include a background-description for the request and a model reply.

Mr Marcelli insisted on careful preparation of the requests in order to receive the best replies possible. He said that 163 requests in the last year with 3.500 replies was a great success, but it could be improved still further by adding final comparative summaries. As the number of requests had become so large, he requested a better search facility on the website.

Mr Bloch said that he was often obliged to forward the questions to other services and insisted on a simplified questioning. He said that the ECPRD network should not be used for questions that could be answered more easily outside.

Mrs Korzeniowska added that the "right question brings the right reply", that a limited number of good replies could already give a useful overview, and that it was not always possible to prepare a comparative summary of the replies due to the subject of the question. The most urgent questions should be formulated with “yes” and “no” replies. About 50% of the questions were about parliamentary practice and procedure, not written in the rules of procedure themselves. She ended by stating that ECPRD was the only existing network for gathering and archiving such information and expressed her thanks to all the people involved!

Mr Iakobashvili suggested the creation of an informal ad-hoc Working Group (6-7 people) to discuss how best to store all the replies in a new database, allocated in the Georgian Parliament, and, if possible, to add all sort of comparative statistical data.

Mr Viegas agreed that the current website should be expanded and equipped with a better search engine. He wondered whether it would be possible to create a central database where each parliament could enter its own data.

Mr Van der Hulst insisted on a final comparative summary for each request, even if in mother tongue, as it was very time-consuming to use the archives of the comparative requests.

Mrs Sillajoe requested the addition of a classification system for the whole website referred to the Eurovoc Thesaurus which is translated into many languages.

Mr Sawicki ended the discussion by proposing that the Executive would prepare new guidelines for comparative requests and study the question of a better structure of the databases. A new version would be forwarded to all the Correspondents, within the next few months so that a decision could be taken at the next Annual Conference of Correspondents in London.

The floor agreed with this proposal.

9.        Statistics concerning Website’s Use and Comparative Requests

Use of Website

Mrs Coppolecchia referred to the annotated overviews of the use of the website (2004 and 2005) and of comparative requests and replies.

Following the issuing of the questionnaire on the website (launched in February 2004), the results of which are available on the website, use of the website had increased: in 2004 the average number of hits was 2.899 per day, while in 2005 there was an average of 3.041 hits per day. Many of these hits came from "the general public" who downloaded ECPRD publications free, and of course, since last year, there was an increased interest in IPEX hosted on the public part of the ECPRD website.

But for the ECPRD-network, only the use of the "private section" (using the password and ID) with all the information was of real interest. In 2004, there had been 9.834 private logins with 7.299 visitor-sessions; in 2005 (until mid-September), the number had increased to 7.025 logins with 5.372 visitor sessions. The web pages mostly accessed were the Comparative Requests, the Calendar of ECPRD events (with the reports of past events), the ECPRD Publications, the News section and of course the Directory.

Statistics on Comparative Requests

The number of comparative requests increased from 123 to 163 during the last year-period. About 50% had been forwarded to all Correspondents, about 30% to the Correspondents of the group of the 25 EU-member countries and 25% to the Correspondents of specifically indicated countries. Because of the continuing technical problems of the website, it had been difficult to use the electronic form systematically, so Mrs Coppolecchia asked participants to send the request also via an e-mail to her normal e-address. She underlined the importance of adding background-information as well as an example for the reply.

The number of replies had also increased by about 35 % (from 2.134 last year to 3.341) and she thanked all the participants. Relating to the overview of the replies given by individual parliaments/chambers, she explained that these numbers had to be interpreted taking into account that some parliaments/chambers did not have a well staffed research unit and were unable to reply more often. Finally she informed the meeting there had been quite a number of replies given by the CRS as well as by the Knesset.

Unfortunately, the number of final comparative summaries had not increased as much as expected. She insisted on the importance of providing the final summary to facilitate the use of the archived requests.

10.        IPEX

Mr Jensen referred to the IPEX Activity report and informed the meeting that the IPEX-Working Group was preparing the launch of a test-website in May 2006. Mr Toornstra would continue to be a member of the Steering Group (for the European Parliament) as well as of the Technical Working Group until spring 2007; the secretariat of the IPEX Steering Group had been moved to the Swedish Riksdag. An updated list of IPEX Correspondents was available on the ECPRD website.

Mr Laporte expressed the importance of the IPEX database for the early-warning system of the EU-legislation in national parliaments and thanked the European Parliament for hosting the IPEX database via the ECPRD site.

11.        The Directorate for "Relations with National Parliaments" in the European Parliament

Mr Jensen informed the floor that since the adoption of the Protocol to the Treaty on the European Union, there had been a growing interest in inter-parliamentary cooperation between the European Parliament and the national parliaments. The European Parliament had identified a number of possible ways of developing these relations even though they were not legally defined. Mr Jensen then indicated the various forms of meetings organised by his newly created Directorate:

a) Joint Parliamentary meetings: These meetings are organised between national parliaments and the European Parliament plus other European institutions, on various subjects (e.g. the Implementation of the Lisbon Strategy and its follow-up; Liberty and Security including the control over Europol, Eurojust, and the European Warrant Arrest).

b) Joint Committee meetings: These meetings are organised to exchange views between members of parliamentary committees of the European parliament and of the national parliaments, to focus during the pre-legislative phase on legislative issues.

c) COSAC meetings: Regular meetings of the Permanent EU Affairs Committees in the national parliaments.

d) Other Tools:

- The COX Programme: a cooperation and exchange programme for parliamentary staff in the national parliaments, initiated in October 2004. To date 14 parliaments of the EU-member-countries have been visited, with the programme coming to completion in February 2006.

- The Parliamentary Network Programme: at the level of parliamentary staff (of the European parliament and of the national parliaments), to discuss the legislative process of ongoing EU-legislation.

- The Network of Representatives of National Parliaments: currently 20 national parliaments (EU-member countries) have a permanent representative housed by the European Parliament, in order to give direct access to the EP- and EP/EU- information for their national parliaments.

Mr Jensen ended this introduction by informing the meeting that information on all these aspects of cooperation would shortly be made available via the new website of the Directorate, via Europarl on Internet.

12.        Relations with National Parliaments in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

Mr Sawicki informed the meeting that PACE's relations with national parliaments was mainly organised via the double mandate of the MPs. One of important concerns was that PACE's activities were not transmitted to national level and that debates on supra-parliamentary activities were not always made available to the public via the national parliaments.

The cooperation programme consisted mainly of seminars organised for Members and staff of national parliaments, on subjects of interest to PACE or other bodies of the Council of Europe. A specific co-operation programme has been recently established with the parliamentary institutions of Serbia and Montenegro as well as with parliaments of the South Caucasus and Kazakhstan. The PACE Secretariat can also offer expert opinions on request.

Mr Wijgergangs thanked both the Co-directors for their introductions and asked for supplementary information on the functions of Mr Sawicki and of Mr Heinrich in the administration of PACE.

Mr Sawicki informed the floor that he was the Director of General Services in the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in charge of all aspects of the Assembly functioning and organisation: plenary sessions, administration, research and documentation, information technology, staff and budget.

Mr Heinrich is the Secretary of the Committee for Rules of Procedure and Immunities, as well as Head of the Documentation and Research Unit.

13.        Other Business

No other business.

Mr Sawicki thanked the Romanian hosts, interpreters and all the staff involved in the organisation of this Conference. He said that this year's conference had indeed been very successful, with wide ranging debates on many issues and valued contributions from all correspondents. He continued by stating that it was clear to all of the ECPRD members that the great value of ECPRD was the openness and confidence between all the correspondents and staff. He thanked again all speakers for their contributions to debates and for their active participation.

Mr Jensen thanked Mr Sawicki for all his preparative work and assistance and thanked Correspondents for their participation, and expressed the hope to meet them all again at the next Conference in London, October 2006.

ANNEX 1

TITLES OF COMPARATIVE REQUESTS 2004 – 2005

500        Adoption of Lisbon National Reform Programmes        2005/12/20

499        Involvement of Parliament in Preparation of EU-Presidency        2005/12/20

498        Electronic Secret Voting Procedure (sent out directly)        2005/12/16

497        Extension of Legislative Provisions during Election Periods        2005/12/16

496        Non-Legislative Functions of the Senate        2005/12/13

495        Economic Monetary Policy in Euro-Area Parliaments        2005/12/12

494        Competition Selling Basic Household Items        2005/12/09

493        Foundations collecting Archives of MEPs        2005/12/08

492        Non-Profit Organisations        2005/11/29

491        Taxation of Investment Units        2005/11/28

490        Pre-Trial Isolation (Criminal Procedure Code)        2005/11/28

489        NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 Regions        2005/11/28

488        Secret Evidence in Court        2005/11/28

487        Security Checks        2005/11/21

486        Sports Activities of MPs        2005/11/21

485        Civil Education and Education for All - Declarations        2005/11/21

484        Use of Plenary Session Hall        2005/11/21

483        Employer-employee Relations in Parliament        2005/11/17

482        Bureau of Questors        2005/11/09

481        Control on Execution of Parliamentary Budget        2005/11/08

480        I-Office of Parliaments (for Public)        2005/11/07

479        Publicity and Communication coming from Public Organisms        2005/11/02

478        Health Care for Asylum Seekers        2005/10/27

477        Courses on First Aid        2005/10/24

476        Financing of Special Housing for Elderly People        2005/10/20

475        Parliamentary Elections - Electoral Law        2005/10/19

474        Classification System used in Parliamentary Library        2005/10/18

473        Working Foreign Students: Tax Preferences/Social Health System        2005/10/17

472        Law on Punishment of Disordered Conduct by Foreigners        2005/10/17

471        National Regulatory Office for Network Industries (Energy Price Regulation)        2005/10/17

470        Council for the Judiciary        2005/10/11

469        Adoption of Orphan Children                      2005/10/10

468        Access by Disabled People/MPs to Parliamentary Buildings        2005/10/10

467        Secret Ballot               2005/10/06

466        Extraordinary Sessions        2005/10/06

465        Training Centre in Parliaments        2005/10/03

464        State Educational Inspection        2005/10/03

463        Planning/Preparation of New Elections        2005/09/22

462        Non-Liability of MPs        2005/09/20

461        Average Time for Passing a Bill        2005/09/19

460        Wine Quality Control        2005/09/08

459        Accommodation of Parliaments        2005/09/05

458        Parliamentary Visitors Centres        2005/09/05

457        Relations between European Parliament and national Parliaments - Technical Aspects        2005/09/02

456        Inter-parliamentary Membership        2005/09/02

455        Nomination of Senior State Officials        2005/09/02

454        Advisory Body for Legislative Drafting        2005/09/02

453        Anti-Rave Laws        2005/08/31

452        Internal Parliamentary Periodicals        2005/08/31

451        Right for Ministers - Employment after Retirement        2005/08/31

450        Prosecution of Child Abusers        2005/08/31

449        Maritime Security        2005/08/31

448        Internal Distribution of Work of Legislators        2005/08/01

447        Regular Visitors to Parliaments - Facilities        2005/06/26

446        Acts of political Protest inside Parliaments        2005/07/06

445        Real Estate Registry        2005/07/20

444        Security in Parliaments        2005/07/11

443        Parliamentary Broadcasting Archives        2005/07/11

442        Growing and Stud of GMOs        2005/07/11

441        Incompatibilities: civil servants and local/national mandate        2005/07/08

440        Cars for MPs        2005/07/07

439        Rules conc. Acts MPs outside Parliament: Traffic Accident        2005/07/06

438        Oral Questioning        2005/07/01

437        Second Homes        2005/07/01

436        Declaration of Interests MPs - Spouses or Companions        2005/06/23

435        European Arrest Warrant        2005/06/16

434        Plenary Session Hall        2005/06/15

433        Protection of Pupils against Violence        2005/06/14

432        Intelligence Services        2005/06/13

431        Handling Minutes of Parliamentary Documents        2005/06/09

430        Pension of Judges        2005/06/08

429        Legal Regulations on Rental Residential Housing        2005/06/08

428        Printed Information Documents distributed to Visitors        2005/06/08

427        Status Permanent Representations in European Parliament        2005/06/07

426        Opening Hours of Parliamentary Libraries        2005/06/06

425        Status of non-profit Organization        2005/05/09

424        Commissioner for Immigration Matters        2005/05/30

423        Legal Regulation of Derelicts        2005/05/30

422        Changes in State/national Symbols        2005/05/28

421        Status of Parliamentary Opposition        2005/05/28

420        Pension Arrangements for MPs        2005/05/25

419        Designation Secretary-General        2005/05/25

418        Legal Services in national Parliaments        2005/05/24

417        Funding of Analysis/Studies... from State Budget        2005/05/25

416        Financial State Support / Loans for Newly Married Couples        2005/05/23

415        Compensation of Crime Victims - Implementation Directive 2004/80/EC        2005/05/23

414        State and Administrative-Territorial Systems        2005/05/23

413        Disturbances of Plenary Sessions        2005/05/18

412        Parliamentary Development Assistance/Cooperation        2005/05/17

411        Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy        2005/05/17

410        Investigation of Crime committed by Police Officers        2005/05/17

409        Document Production / XML in Parliaments        2005/05/10

408        Electronic Voting in Parliament        2005/05/09

407        Public Image of Parliament        2005/04/28

406        Forums of Co-operation between MPs and MEPs        2005/04/26

405        (Prove of) Acquisition of Property        2005/04/25

404        Modernization in the Houses of Parliament        2005/04/20

403        Campaign for Referendum on the European Constitution        2005/04/18

402        Amnesty Law / Pardon Law        2005/04/18

401        Parliamentary Committees on Equality between Women and Men        2005/04/14

400        Legal and Financial Support for Members of national Parliaments        2005/04/11

399        Compensation and Allowances MPs        2005/04/11

398        Survey - Bibliography Publishing Activities MPs        2005/04/11

397        Inter-Community Associations        2005/04/05

396        Violence against Women Regulations        2005/03/30

395        Parliamentary Staff: Activities, Status, Salaries ...        2005/03/29

394        EU-Legislation on Discrimination into national Law        2005/03/23

393        Criminal Provisions relating to Nazism and Communism        2005/03/22

392        Document Management        2005/03/22

391        Constitutional Amendments        2005/03/21

390        Ineligibilities and Incompatibilities MPs - Follow Up        2005/03/21

389        Distance Allowance MPs ...        2005/03/21

388        Non-Cash Payments of Fines        2005/03/18

387        Referendum for EU -Accession        2005/03/18

386        Investigation and Verification Office        2005/03/15

385        Expulsion of Aliens        2005/03/15

384        Shorthand Writers in Parliaments        2005/03/11

383        Services provided to MEPs by national Parliaments        2005/03/09

382        One Member Party/Faction (as a result of a scission)        2005/03/09

381        Horse-Breeding: Financial Subventions        2005/03/09

380        Age of Criminal Responsibility        2005/03/07

379        Return of Saving Deposits        2005/03/01

378        Voting Systems based on Wireless Technology        2005/02/24

377        Vote by Secret Ballot        2005/02/21

376        Law on Restitution        2005/02/18

375        Wording for Criminal Proceedings        2005/02/16

374        Legal Provisions / Wording in Criminal Code        2005/02/16

373        Social Security for Agricultural Workers        2005/02/15

372        Europolis (European-style City)        2005/02/14

371        Organisation of Government        2005/02/07

370        Textbooks Primary and Secondary Education        2005/02/07

369        Proposals for Amendments of the State Budget        2005/02/03

368        Assistance with Suicide and Euthanasia        2005/02/02

367        Legalization Programmes of Immigrants (already living in the country)        2005/02/01

366        MPs Right to Information        2005/02/01

365        Political Advertisements (electoral Campaigns)        2005/01/31

364        Genetic Diagnostics        2005/01/31

363        Hitch-Hiking        2005/01/31

362        Excessive Distress        2005/01/26

361        Procedures in Electoral Law        2005/01/24

360        Insurance in Agriculture        2005/01/24

359        Passports        2005/01/24

358        Expropriation for Building Transport Infrastructure        2005/01/24

357        Integrated Parliamentary Portals        2005/01/21

356        Sale of Alcoholic Beverages in Parliament        2005/01/20

355        Update Salaries and Pension Contribution for MPs        2005/01/20

354        Annual Account Companies (Fourth Council Directive)        2005/01/18

353        Statistical Data Number of Visitors in Parliaments        2005/01/18

352        Rules for Display of National Flag in Parliaments        2005/01/17

351        Civic Use of Fireworks        2005/01/13

350        Status Assistants MPs        2005/01/12

349        Former MPs - Organisations and Participation Law-Making Process        2005/01/12

348        Account Managers within Department of Information Services        2005/01/11

347        Hearings of Witnesses by Parliamentary Committees in national Parliaments        2005/01/10

346        MPs of Foreign Extraction        2005/01/07

345        Role of Parliaments in the Field of Foreign Affairs        2005/01/04

344        Programme Laws (Execution of Budget)        2005/01/03

343        Parliamentary Relations with Georgian Parliament        2005/01/03

342        Bakery-Confectionery Shops        2005/01/03

341        Sanctions for Breaching Confidentiality        2005/01/03

340        Public Authorities               2004/12/20

339        Titles of Civil Servants        2004/12/17

338        MEPs - Election and Mandate        2004/12/14

337        Secondary Education        2004/12/13

336        Salaries of Policemen, Fire-fighters and Prison Service Employees        2004/12/10

335        Temporary Unemployment/Disability Insurance        2004/12/07

334        Agency for Confiscation of Illegally Acquired Property        2004/12/01

333        EU-Information Centres        2004/12/01

332        Amounts Salaries and Pension Contribution MPs        2004/11/24

331        Reception Services in national parliaments        2004/11/22

330        Lobbies in national Parliaments (10 new EU-countries)        2004/11/22

329        Parliamentary Library Buildings - Maps, Projects...        2004/11/12

328        Services provided to MEPs        2004/11/12

327        Parliamentary Process of Discussion about the Budget        2004/11/09

326        Asylum Applications Processing System        2004/11/04

325        Health Screening of Tourists and/or Migrants        2004/11/03

324        Parliamentary-Government Interaction        2004/10/25

323        Participation of MEPs in Activities National Parliaments (Own Initiative)        2004/10/22

322        Audit Reports        2004/10/22

321        Rights and Resources of the Opposition in Parliaments        2004/10/20

320        Religious Communities        2004/10/18

319        Fight against Terrorism        2004/10/18

318        Pre-marital Agreement        2004/10/12

317        Public Service Broadcasting        2004/10/12

316        Secession of MPs        2004/10/11

315        Status of Members of the Anti-Fascist Resistance        2004/10/11

314        Discharges of Pollutants        2004/10/08

313        Renewable Sources of Energy        2004/10/08

312        European Flag in Parliamentary Buildings        2004/10/07

311        Rural Entrepreneurs: Subsidies and Interest Rate Support        2004/10/07

310        MPs in Supervisory Boards        2004/10/05

309        VAT        2004/10/04

308        Ineligibilities and incompatibilities MPs        2004/09/29

307        Sanctions foreseen in Penal Law        2004/09/24

306        Subsidiarity        2004/09/23

305        Election Commission        2004/09/21

304        Boycott in Parliament        2004/09/14

303        Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services. Meeting Users Changing Needs        2004/09/08

302        Treaty European Constitution - Analysis, Ratification, Referendum ...        2004/09/07

301        Prohibition of Smoking while Driving        2004/09/06

300        Rules on Parliamentary Immunity        2004/09/01

299        Policy Consulting        2004/08/31

298        Children s Web Page        2004/08/31

297        Notification        2004/08/30

296        Professional Sport Players - Employment System        2004/08/30

295        Prison Escaping and ID-Cards        2004/08/30

294        System of Distribution of the Official Journal        2004/08/30

293        Convenient Stores        2004/08/04

292        Role of National Parliaments in Foreign Affairs        2004/07/30

291        Behaviour of Visitors in Parliaments / Chambers        2004/07/28

290        Changing Role of Foreign Affairs Committees        2004/07/23

289        Working Languages in Chambers / Parliaments        2004/07/22

288        Structures under Supervision of the Chairman of the Parliament/Chamber        2004/07/22

287        Services offered to MPs in the Plenary-Room        2004/07/20

286        Parliamentary Investigations        2004/07/20

285        Sale of Medicinal Products        2004/07/08

284        Survey on parliamentary Recesses and Periods of Meetings        2004/07/07

283        MP Salaries - Variations        2004/07/07

282        Mother and Baby Centre in Parliaments        2004/07/05

281        Expert Witness and Court Interpreters        2004/07/02

280        Military Equipment - Import Rules        2004/07/05

279        Confidential Discussions in Parliament        2004/06/24

278        Informative Provision from the Government        2004/06/24

277       MPs Absence Regulations and Penalties ...        2004/06/09

276        Survey on Attitude of MPs towards services offered by the secretariat of the Parliament        2004/06/04

275        Display of European Flag in Parliamentary Building        2004/06/02

274        Working Conditions of Accredited Journalists in Parliaments        2004/06/01

273        Mentally Disabled People        2004/06/01

272        Symbol of Parliament / Chamber and its Use        2004/06/01

271        Legal Framework of Maintenance Payments        2004/05/27

270        Infrastructure Projects        2004/05/26

269        Driving under Influence of Alcohol - Regulations and Penalties        2004/05/25

268        Implementation of the EU Legislation - Constitutional Changes        2004/05/19

267        Qualifications for Driving Licences and Licences for Firearms        2004/05/18

266        Financial Support and Benefits during Maternity Leave        2004/05/11

265        Attitude of Citizens towards their Parliament and Members        2004/05/05

264        Use of Bugging Devices by the Police        2004/05/05

263        Introduction of Biometric Identifiers (into Visas, Residence Permits, EU- Passports)        2004/05/05

262        Rules on Imprisonment        2004/05/03

261        Nomination Procedure for Senior State Officials        2004/04/30

260        Reform Upper House (internal/official documentation)        2004/04/30

259        Divorce Law        2004/04/30

258        Official Judicial Inquiries conc. Discrimination when Sentencing Criminals        2004/04/29

257        Animal Vaccination Policy        2004/04/27

256        Safety of Massive Sports Events        2004/04/21

255        Control Enterprises        2004/04/21

254        Withholding Tax on Interest Income        2004/04/19

253        1- Accountability Speakers and 2- Procedure Parliamentary Questions        2004/04/15

252        Farmers - Taxation of Direct Payments        2004/04/14

251        Reimbursement Rate Travel/Mission MPs and Officials National Parliaments        2004/04/14

250        Sickness Insurance Scheme for Retired MPs               2004/04/14

249        Expert and Research Support of Foreign-and EU-Policy        2004/04/13

248        Statistical Data Parliamentary Activity        2004/04/06

247        Parking Regulations        2004/04/05

246        Gender Quota in National Parliaments        2004/03/26

245        Classified Information in Courts        2004/03/26

244        Cooperation and Promoting Democracy within Parliaments        2004/03/25

243        Period of Mourning - Suspending Parliamentary Activities        2004/03/25

241        Information Products        2004/03/23

240        Interest Groups representing Gardeners        2004/03/22

239        Video Surveillance at Traffic Intersections        2004/03/16

238        Transparency Rules applying to Subsidiarity Activities of MPs        2004/03/16

237        Protection of Minors against Harmful Contents in Mass Media        2004/03/16

236        Small Enterprises: Specific Labour-Regulations        2004/03/08

235        MEPs and National Parliaments        2004/03/04

233        Greenhouse Gas Emission Directive - Implementation        2004/03/01

232        Animal Pornography        2004/03/01

231        Compensation MPs when returning to professional activities        2004/03/01

230        Salaries incoming MEPs        2004/02/26

229        Accreditation Mass Media in national Parliaments        2004/02/26

228        Statute MEPs - measures national parliaments EU        2004/02/25

227        Interim MEPs        2004/02/25

226        Execution of Powers by Members ... Local Self-Government        2004/02/24

225        E-Parliament: electronic services for MPs        2004/02/20

223        Organization of Local Self Government in Capitals        2004/02/19

222        Subsidiarity Check        2004/02/19

221        National Flags Holiday        2004/02/11

220        Camera Operators for Parliamentary Sessions        2004/02/10

219        Pardon or Amnesty        2004/02/10

218        Statistics Parliamentary Voting        2004/02/09

217        Informative Bulletin and Television of Parliaments        2004/02/09

216        Rules Public Openness of Parliament               2004/02/09

215        Employment of EU nationals in Civil Service of EU member-states        2004/02/09

214        Relations between Parliament and NGOs (Law Making Process)        2004/02/02

213        Preservation of Digital and Digitalized Material in Parliaments        2004/02/02

212        Hearings on Legal Policy, RIA        2004/01/30

211        Speakers and Deputy-Speakers: powers, ...        2004/01/28

210        Legal Relations between Ministers and Top Civil Servants        2004/01/27

209        Dress Code for MPs        2004/01/26

208        Parliamentary Report to Voters        2004/01/26

207        Mobilizing EP Campaign        2004/01/26

206        Control of Self Governing Bodies        2004/01/22

204        Parliamentary Gardens - Landscape Architecture        2004/01/20

203        Selection Procedure (Candidates high European Officials)        2004/01/20

202        E-response in Parliaments        2004/01/09

201        Rules Financial Commitments        2004/01/06

200        Disposition Parliamentary Budget        2004/01/06

199        Parliamentary Committees (Minority) and Hearings        2004/01/05

REQUESTS FOR COMPARATIVE STUDIES by Parliaments

1 January 2004 – 31 December 2005

Countries	Chambers	1.1-31.12.04	1.1-31.12.05
	PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE	1
	EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT	10	13
ALBANIA	KUVENDI		1
ANDORRA	CONSELL GENERAL
ARMENIA	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	3	5
AUSTRIA	PARLAMENT - NATIONALRAT/BUNDESRAT
AZERBAIJAN	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
BELGIUM	CHAMBRE DES REPRESENTANTS	2	1
	SENAT
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA	HOUSES OF PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY	3	3
BULGARIA	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	3	1
CANADA	HOUSE OF COMMONS
CROATIA	HRVATSKI SABOR	2
CYPRUS	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	2	3
CZECH REPUBLIC	CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES	19	16
	SENAT
DENMARK	FOLKETINGET	2	2
ESTONIA	RIIGIKOGU	8	4
FINLAND	EDUSKUNTA		5
FRANCE	ASSEMBLEE NATIONALE	3	5
	SENAT
GEORGIA	PARLIAMENT	6	11
GERMANY	BUNDESRAT
	BUNDESTAG	4	4
GREECE	VOULI TON ELLINON	1	1
HUNGARY	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	2	4
ICELAND	ALTHINGI	1	2
IRELAND	HOUSES OF OIREACHTAS
ISRAEL	THE KNESSET		4
ITALY	CAMERA DEI DEPUTATI		1
	SENATO	1	1
LATVIA	SAEIMA	1
LIECHTENSTEIN	LANDTAG
LITHUANIA	SEIMAS	1	6
LUXEMBOURG	CHAMBRE DES DEPUTES
MALTA	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MOLDOVA	ASSEMBLY	2
NETHERLANDS	EERSTE KAMER
	TWEEDE KAMER	9	10
NORWAY	STORTINGET		2
POLAND	SEJM	4	4
	SENAT	2	2
PORTUGAL	ASSEMBLEIA	2	1
ROMANIA	CAMERA DEPUTATILOR		2
	SENAT
RUSSIA	DUMA	1	2
	FEDERAL ASSEMBLY	4	1
SAN MARINO	CONSIGLIO GRANDE E GENERALE
SLOVAKIA	NATIONAL COUNCIL	8	12
SLOVENIA	NATIONAL COUNCIL		1
	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	1	5
SPAIN	CONGRESO DE LOS DIPUTADOS	1	2
	SENADO	2	1
SWEDEN	RIKSDAG	17	11
SWITZERLAND	ASSEMBLEE FEDERALE	2	1
“THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA”	ASSEMBLY		3
TURKEY	GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	4	4
UKRAINE	VERKHOVNA RADA	1
UNITED KINGDOM	HOUSE OF COMMONS	3	2
	HOUSE OF LORDS		1
USA	CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
TOTAL		138	160

REPLIES TO COMPARATIVE STUDIES by Parliaments

1 January 2004 – 31 December 2005

Countries	Chambers	1.1-31.12.04	1.1-31.12.05
	PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE	9	9
	EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT	14	16
ALBANIA	KUVENDI	13	29
ANDORRA	CONSELL GENERAL
ARMENIA	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	19	35
AUSTRIA	PARLAMENT - NATIONALRAT/BUNDESRAT	98	112
AZERBAIJAN	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY		3
BELGIUM	CHAMBRE DES REPRESENTANTS	81	109
	SENAT	72	104
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA	HOUSES OF PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY	13	49
BULGARIA	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	50	57
CANADA	HOUSE OF COMMONS	1
CROATIA	HRVATSKI SABOR	56	65
CYPRUS	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	47	35
CZECH REPUBLIC	CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES	57	81
	SENAT	35	41
DENMARK	FOLKETINGET	81	124
ESTONIA	RIIGIKOGU	91	115
FINLAND	EDUSKUNTA	107	116
FRANCE	ASSEMBLEE NATIONALE	72	66
	SENAT	12	17
GEORGIA	PARLIAMENT	51	57
GERMANY	BUNDESRAT	43	70
	BUNDESTAG	57	35
GREECE	VOULI TON ELLINON	57	87
HUNGARY	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	15	20
ICELAND	ALTHINGI	26	60
IRELAND	HOUSES OF OIREACHTAS	5	12
ISRAEL	THE KNESSET		48
ITALY	CAMERA DEI DEPUTATI	61	92
	SENATO	80	86
LATVIA	SAEIMA	70	93
LIECHTENSTEIN	LANDTAG	1
LITHUANIA	SEIMAS	62	87
LUXEMBOURG	CHAMBRE DES DEPUTES	23	20
MALTA	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MOLDOVA	ASSEMBLY	17	1
NETHERLANDS	EERSTE KAMER	14	17
	TWEEDE KAMER	22	56
NORWAY	STORTINGET	35	60
POLAND	SEJM	85	112
	SENAT	26	63
PORTUGAL	ASSEMBLEIA	83	92
ROMANIA	CAMERA DEPUTATILOR	18	18
	SENAT	1
RUSSIA	DUMA	31	33
	FEDERAL ASSEMBLY	26	20
SAN MARINO	CONSIGLIO GRANDE E GENERALE
SLOVAKIA	NATIONAL COUNCIL	90	103
SLOVENIA	NATIONAL COUNCIL	15	15
	NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	60	79
SPAIN	CONGRESO DE LOS DIPUTADOS	51	50
	SENADO	86	53
SWEDEN	RIKSDAG	88	111
SWITZERLAND	ASSEMBLEE FEDERALE	54	71
“THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA”	ASSEMBLY	54	66
TURKEY	GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	2	11
UKRAINE	VERKHOVNA RADA	15	15
UNITED KINGDOM	HOUSE OF COMMONS	99	129
	HOUSE OF LORDS	40	47
USA	CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE	2	44
TOTAL		2.493	3.216

ANNEX 2

Attendance at ECPRD seminars

EVENT	VENUE	DATE	ATTENDING
Role of Legislative Services in the Legislative Process	Warsaw	25-26 March 2004	51
Macroeconomic Research Working Group	Sofia	16 April 2004	35
Parliamentary Public Relations	Bratislava	22-23 April 2004	77
Security in Parliaments	Ljubljana	27-28 May 2004	51
Conference of Correspondents	Berlin	14-15 October 2004	64
Macroeconomic Research Working Group	Strasbourg	22-23 October 2004	32
Parliamentary Libraries and Research Services: meeting users' changing needs	London	4-5 November 2004	66
ICT Working Group	Lisbon	17-19 November 2004	88
Macroeconomic Research Working Group	Yerevan	3-4 June 2005	19
Conference of Correspondents	Bucharest	13-14 October 2005	52
Technical Aspects Derived from Relations between the European Parliament and EU Member States National Parliaments	Madrid	27-28 October 2005	41
EUROVOC	Brussels	10 March 2006	62
		TOTAL	638

ANNEX 3

List of ECPRD Correspondents

Country / Pays / Land	Correspondent / Correspondant / Korrespondent
ALBANIA	Mrs Zana BUFI (Deputy: Ms Aida SHURDHA)
ANDORRA	Mr Erick GARASA MINGORANCE
ARMENIA	Mrs Arpi ARAKELYAN (Deputy: Mrs Adelina GHARIBYAN)
AUSTRIA	Mr Herbert WEBER (Deputy: Mrs Elisabeth DIETRICH-SCHULTZ)
AZERBAIJAN	Mr Mehman NAMAZOV
BELGIUM	Mr Marc VAN DER HULST (Deputy: Mr Alberik GORIS) Mr André REZSOHAZY (Deputy: Mr Gert VAN DER BIESEN)
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA	Mrs Gordana SLAVNIC (Deputy: Ms Azra BRANKOVIC)
BULGARIA	Mrs Venetta TRIFONOVA (Deputy: Ms Elena KAMENOVA)
CANADA (Observer)	Mr Hugh FINSTEN
CROATIA	Mrs Branka MARTINCIC
CYPRUS	Mr Costas CHRISTOFOROU (Deputy: Ms Christiana SOLOMONIDOU)
CZECH REPUBLIC	Dr Karel SOSNA (Deputy: Mr Robert VYKLICKY) Mr Jiri GEORGIEV (Deputy: Mr Jan KYSELA)
DENMARK	Mrs Hanne RASMUSSEN (Deputy: Mr Peter EGEMOSE GRIB)
ESTONIA	Ms Siiri SILLAJOE (Deputy: Ms Margit MUUL)
FINLAND	Mr Antti RAUTAVA
FRANCE	Mr Jean-Pierre BLOCH Mr Jean LAPORTE
GEORGIA	Mr Irakli IAKOBASHVILI (Deputy: Mrs Marika MESKHISHVILI)
GERMANY	Dr. Hans Peter BLATT (Deputy: Mr Kolja BARTSCH) Mr Wolfgang FISCHER (Deputy: Mrs Monika RUMPE)
GREECE	Mr George KARABATZOS (Deputy: Mr Antonis PANTELIS)
HUNGARY	Ms Katalin BALAZS
ICELAND	Mr Viggó GÍSLASON
IRELAND	Mrs Maura CORCORAN (Deputy: Mr Seamus HAUGHEY)
ISRAEL (Observer)	Mr Jacob WARSHAVSKY (Deputy : Mr Judah TROEN)
ITALY	Dr. Alessandro PALANZA Mr Francesco MARCELLI
LATVIA	Mrs Ineta LUKA-INDANE (Deputy: Mr Janis KAPENIEKS)
LIECHTENSTEIN	Mr Josef HILTI
LITHUANIA	Mrs Danute VABALAITE (Deputy: Mr Rimantas GRIKIENIS)
LUXEMBOURG	Mr Carlo LINDEN
MALTA	Mr Raymond GRILLO
MEXICO (Observer)	./.
MOLDOVA	Mr Alexandru MOCANU
MONACO	./.
NETHERLANDS	Ms Joke BOISSEVAIN-MARINUS Mr André VAN DER MEER (Deputy: Mr Nico BAL)
NORWAY	Mr Oddvar OVERÅ
POLAND	Mr Wiesław STAŚKIEWICZ Mrs Ewa NAWROCKA
PORTUGAL	Mr Pedro VALENTE (Deputy: Ms Maria Paula FARIA)
ROMANIA	Ms Irina NISTOR (Deputy: Paunita TURCU) Mrs Constanta CALINOU (Deputy: Mr Eugen GASNAS)
RUSSIAN FEDERATION	Mr Oleg V. UTKIN (Deputy: Mrs Irina ANDREEVA) Mr Viktor KRIVOV (Deputy: Mrs Elena MOLOCHKOVA)
SAN MARINO	Mrs Antonella GIARDI
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO	./.
SLOVAKIA	Mrs Anna OKRUHLICOVA (Deputy: Mrs Eva ZAHRADNIKOVA)
SLOVENIA	Mrs Natasa GLAVNIK Mr Dusan STRUS (Deputy: Mrs Ana IVAS)
SPAIN	Mrs Maria Rosa RIPOLLÉS SERRANO Mr Fernando SANTAOLALLA LOPEZ
SWEDEN	Mr Gunnar FORS (Deputy: Mr Ingvar MATTSON)
SWITZERLAND	Mr Ernst FRISCHKNECHT (Deputy: Mr Jean-Claude HAYOZ)
“THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA”	Mrs Ankica KRSTEVSKA (Deputy: Mrs Jadranka LAZAREVSKA)
TURKEY	Mr Ahmet YILDIZ
UKRAINE	Mr Borys M. KOLISNYCHENKO
UNITED KINGDOM	Mr Robert CLEMENTS (Deputy: Mr Richard CRACKNELL) Dr. Peter DAVIS (Deputy: Dr. Isolde VICTORY)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA	Ms Martha DEXTER
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT	Mr Alain BARRAU, Acting Co-Director (Deputy: Mr Josep Maria RIBOT)
PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE	Mr Wojciech SAWICKI, Co-Director
ASSEMBLY OF THE WESTERN EUROPEAN UNION	Mr Eike BURCHARD

ANNEX 4

Statutes of the ECPRD - Draft by the Statutory Working Group

The Statutes of the ECPRD were adopted by the ECPRD Secretaries General meeting at the Conference of Speakers in Budapest on 7 June 1996 and subsequently amended in Tallinn on 31 May 2006.

PREAMBLE

The European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD) was created in 1977 at the request of the Conference of Speakers of European Parliamentary Assemblies (as from 2004: the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments).

I. AIMS

Article 1

1. The objectives of the ECPRD are to promote the exchange of information, ideas, experience and good practice among the administrations of parliaments in Europe on subjects of common interest; to strengthen close co-operation among parliamentary services in all fields of parliamentary administration, legislation, information, research and documentation; and to collect, exchange and publicise studies produced by parliamentary services.

2. In the exchange of information the ECPRD shall promote, wherever possible, the use and development of Information and Communication Technology.

3. The ECPRD shall co-operate with other networks dealing with the exchange of information among parliaments in Europe.

II. COMPOSITION OF THE ECPRD

Article 2

The ECPRD’s members are: the European Parliament; the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; the Assembly of Western European Union; and parliamentary chambers where the President is a member of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments.

Article 3

1. A parliament possessing special guest or observer status with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe may participate in the different activities of the ECPRD but may not vote in its bodies.

2. The ECPRD may co-operate with non-European parliamentary chambers.

III. GOVERNING BODIES OF THE ECPRD

i. THE MEETING OF THE SECRETARIES GENERAL

Article 4

The ECPRD operates under the authority of the Secretaries General of member chambers. At their meetings held every two years on the occasion of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments, they approve the activity report and action programme of the ECPRD and establish priorities for its functioning.

ii. THE CONFERENCE OF CORRESPONDENTS

Article 5

1. The Secretary General of each parliamentary chamber appoints a senior official (Correspondent) to represent the chamber within the Conference of Correspondents of the ECPRD. Secretaries General may also appoint Deputy Correspondents.

2. The Correspondent is selected from officials whose activities bring them into close contact with the ECPRD and who have direct access to the Secretary General of the chamber. He/she can thereby co-ordinate the activities of those officials of his/her chamber who are asked to play an active role in the ECPRD.

Article 6

1. The Conference of Correspondents is responsible, in co-operation with the Co-Directors (see Article 8), for the organisation of the activities of the ECPRD. It examines the draft report on the activities of the ECPRD, drafted and presented by the Co-Directors, which includes the action programme of the ECPRD for the following two years.

2. The report, together with the action programme, is then submitted for approval to the Secretaries General and subsequently to the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments which is invited to take note of it.

3. Meetings of the Conference of Correspondents, chaired by the Co-Directors, take place at least every twelve months.

4. Decisions of the Conference of Correspondents are reached, in principle, by consensus. If consensus cannot be reached, issues will be decided by a vote with a necessary majority of at least two-thirds of the votes cast, representing a majority of members of the ECPRD (see Article 2).

iii. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Article 7

1. The Executive Committee is composed of the two Co-Directors and five Correspondents elected by the Conference of Correspondents. The Committee will meet as often as necessary, at the request of at least two of its members or five Correspondents.

2. The members of the Executive Committee, other than the Co-Directors, shall be elected for a period of three years. They may be re-elected. Elections will take place at the Correspondents' annual meeting, with due consideration being paid to the need to maintain geographical balance in the membership of the Executive Committee.

3. The Executive Committee may take decisions when a majority of its members is present. Decisions shall be taken by a majority of the votes cast.

iv. THE CO-DIRECTORS

Article 8

1. The Secretaries General of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe each nominate a senior official as a Co-Director of the ECPRD.

2. The two Co-Directors are responsible for the management of all activities of the ECPRD and are assisted by the two Co-Secretaries of the ECPRD and by other officials of their respective institutions.

3. The Co-Directors may at the same time be the Correspondents for their assemblies.

IV. WORKING METHODS

Article 9

1. The ECPRD promotes co-operation between member chambers through the exchange of information, compilation of documentation and studies and the organisation of seminars; and by the sharing of knowledge of parliamentary ICT applications. The Executive Committee, with due consideration being paid to recommendations from the Conference of Correspondents, shall establish detailed guidelines for studies and comparative requests and for the organisation of ECPRD seminars.

2. The ECPRD may also participate in or initiate other activities organised within its fields of interest.

3. When it considers that a given area requires a continuity of activity, the Conference of Correspondents may decide on the appointment of a Co-ordinator responsible for promoting close co-operation between the member chambers in that area. The Co-ordinator shall be appointed by the Executive Committee from among the competent staff of member chambers, for a renewable term of three years.

4. On a proposal from the Executive Committee, and to meet specific terms of reference, the Conference of Correspondents may also decide to set up ad hoc working groups composed of staff of member chambers. The Executive Committee shall determine their composition and duration, which must not exceed three years.

V. FINANCING OF THE ECPRD

Article 10

1. Member chambers of the ECPRD meet the cost of participation of their officials in ECPRD activities as well as the costs of communication with the ECPRD.

2. Member chambers may organise activities of the ECPRD, such as meetings, seminars etc., and bear the costs of such events. They may also make voluntary financial contributions to the ECPRD.

3. The operating costs of the ECPRD are covered by the budgets of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in conformity with current practice.

4. The ECPRD may accept outside donations following a favourable opinion from the Conference of Correspondents.

V1. REVISION OF THE STATUTES

Article 11

The revision of these Statutes is the responsibility of the Secretaries General of the member chambers gathered at their meeting on the occasion of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliaments.