- The Conference of Speakers of the European Union Parliaments is the body promoting the role of parliaments in the EU and supporting interparliamentary activities. It provides a forum for discussion and exchange of information and experiences on the responsibilities of parliaments, forms and instruments of EU interparliamentary cooperation, as well as challenges facing the European Union. The EUSC also oversees the coordination of interparliamentary activities within the EU. The participants of the Conference are the Speakers of parliaments of the EU Member States and the President of the European Parliament. The Conference respects in its activities the autonomy and constitutional position of each participating Speaker.
- The first meeting of the Speakers of national parliaments and the European Parliament was held in Rome in 1963. The next such meeting was organised 10 years later in Strasbourg to mark the enlargement of the Community. Since mid-1970s, the meetings have been held regularly, until 1981 with the participation of speakers of the member states of the Council of Europe. Poland, as well as the other candidate countries at the time, was invited to participate in EUSC in 2001.
- Currently, in line with the EUSC Guidelines adopted in Rome in September 2000, as amended in Stockholm in May 2010, the Conference meets on an annual basis, in the first half of the calendar year. It is organised by the parliament of the member state holding the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of the previous year (Poland hosted the Conference in April 2012). EUSC agendas and debates are prepared at meetings of Secretaries-General.
- According to the Guidelines, meetings of the Conference operate by consensus, respecting the autonomy and different competences of each participating Speaker. Meetings end with the adoption of Presidency conclusions, which should reflect the common view of the EUSC, but are not binding on individual parliaments.
The Conference can establish working groups aimed at addressing matters concerning the role of parliaments and the organisation of interparliamentary cooperation.
Written papers are circulated in French and English. Deliberations are translated simultaneously into official EU languages upon request, in accordance with established rules. - Presidency conclusions are sent to the members of the Conference. The Presidency also sends its conclusions to the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council, the President-in-Office of the General Affairs Council, and the COSAC Troika. The Presidency Conclusions are published in the EU Speakers' Conference section of the IPEX website, and in Polish - on the OIDE website.
- In exercising the oversight of the coordination of interparliamentary activities, the EUSC:
- in 2004, in The Hague, adopted the “Guidelines for Inter-parliamentary Cooperation in the European Union” defining the objectives, frameworks, areas and tools of the cooperation, which were amended in Lisbon in 2008 and in Berlin in 2021;
- in 2000, made a recommendation to create IPEX – the Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange*; IPEX, launched officially in 2006, enables the electronic exchange of EU-related parliamentary information (i.a., issues of subsidiarity scrutiny, political dialogue, sub-pages of permanent interparliamentary conferences);
- implemented interparliamentary cooperation mechanisms in the form of Inter-Parliamentary Conference for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy (IPC CFSP/CSDP, Warsaw 2012), Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance in the European Union (IPC SECG, Rome 2014) as well as Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Group on Europol (JPSG, Bratislava 2017).
Updated: 10.07.2023
*See: Lexicon