Next week, Members of the European Parliament (“MEPs”) will gather in Brussels for committee meetings. Several interesting votes and meetings are scheduled to take place.
On Monday, the European Parliament’s Committee on the International Market and Consumer Protection (“IMCO”) will vote on a resolution that calls on the Commission to establish a consumer “right to repair”. According to the draft report prepared by Rapporteur MEP David Cormand (Greens/EFA, FR) on a sustainable Single Market for businesses and consumers, the repair of consumer products should become systematic and affordable. This could be achieved through guaranteeing unrestricted access to repair and maintenance information and the standardization of spare parts. Extending guarantees could also incentivize repairs over replacements. MEPs also call for the providing a legal guarantee at the EU level to cover repairs that are no longer under the regular national consumer guarantee. The draft report is available here.
On Monday and Wednesday, there will be two rounds of negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU on the EU’s long-term budget (“Multi-Annual Financial Framework”) and Own Resources. Previously, the negotiations were temporarily suspended, after MEPs walked out of a meeting with the Council. They considered the Council unconstructive and not forthcoming in their demands to expand the budget for certain flagship EU programs, including the Connecting Europe Facility and Horizon Europe. The pressure to reach an agreement is building, as time is running out to give the European Parliament and the national parliaments sufficient time to ratify the budget. A deal must be reached at the end of October or beginning of November 2020. As reported previously, some progress has been made in the other rounds of negotiations, including on new Own Resources for the EU and the role of the budgetary authority, but several critical points of disagreement still need to be resolved. The press release of the European Parliament after the temporary suspension of the negotiations is available here.
On Tuesday, the Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (“INTA”) will vote on the EU-China Agreement on Geographical Indicators (“GIs”). The Agreement, first concluded in November 2019, protects 100 EU GIs, such as Cava, Champagne, Feta, Irish whiskey and Münchener Bier, and 100 Chinese GIs, including Pixian Dou Ban (Pixian Bean Paste) and Anji Bai Cha (Anji White Tea). The European Parliament needs to give its consent before the Agreement can enter into force. After four years, the scope of the agreement will expand to include an additional 175 GIs for each party to the Agreement. The draft Agreement is available here. The list of the EU GIs is available here and the list of the Chinese GIs is available here.
For the complete agenda and overview of the meetings, please see here.