European Commission: Strategy Paper and Report 2003

Participation in the work of the Union before accession

Candidate countries already participate in a number of Community committees and agencies. In order to reinforce the gradual integration of acceding States into Community structures, these states should be given, after the signature of the Accession Treaty, the possibility to further participate, wherever legally possible, as observers in all committees set up by the comitology procedure and all other committees. The Commission, furthermore, considers that acceding States should also be able to participate at least as observers in the relevant structures of all Community agencies.The general principles and details of this participation will be defined at a later stage. In order to facilitate financing the costs of effective participation, each acceding State could, if it so wishes, reserve appropriate amounts in the envelope of its national pre-accession programme.

The European Parliament is equally planning to let observers from the candidate countries participate in the work of the Parliament.

There will also be a need to define the modalities of involving the acceding countries in the process of adopting new acquis during the period between the signature of the Accession Treaty and the date of accession. This has traditionally been done by an exchange of letters on the information and consultation procedure for acceding countries prior to decisions taken by the Council. The Council intends, as in past enlargements, to take appropriate decisions in order to allow the acceding countries to take part in the decision shaping process.