By Loreline Merelle
The establishment of a European public prosecutor's office to combat offences prejudicial to the Union's financial interests, supported by the Commission and the European Parliament, is not off to a good start. The 28 have been divided over the
draft regulation
under discussion since its publication by the executive in July 2013, and even before then, since adoption of the Lisbon Treaty and Article 86
TFEU
authorising it.
According to the most pessimistic projections, the regulation is…
'Yellow card' procedure
Under the subsidiarity control measure (Article 5.3 of the Treaty on European Union and Protocol No 2 on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality) any national parliament or any chamber of a national parliament has eight weeks from the date of transmission of a draft legislative act to submit to the presidents of the European Parliament, Council and Commission a reasoned opinion stating why it considers that the draft in question does not comply with the subsidiarity principle. When negative reasoned opinions are issued by at least one third of the votes attributed to national parliaments (one vote for chamber for bicameral parliaments, two votes for unicameral parliaments), the proposal must be re-examined (yellow card).
