Sunday EU geek quiz: What is NLE?

Try to imagine what the Eurocrats have been filling up their days with lately. Well, the Lisbon Treaty has spiced up their boring bureaucratic routines, giving some headaches especially to those working in the Secretariats General and the Legal Services of the institutions.For the rest, of course, all the novelties and how they will impact their work are still a well-kept secret. Or perhaps a yet non-deciphered mystery.

There has been a big debate about the SWIFT affair in the last weeks. But, looking into the file in more detail, something else than the often discussed content got my attention: the code of the procedure: NLE/2009/0190. A quick research led me to the full name of the procedure: Interinstitutional non-legislative procedure. For those who (for one reason or another) are interested in knowing what this procedure covers and cannot figure it out from the large list of documents labeled post-Lisbon with the NLE code, I am afraid I don’t have good news. The new code covers all the procedures where the European Parliament is involved but which do not fall under the new ordinary legislative procedure (formerly known as co-decision) or the special legislative procedures (the old consultation and assent).

Quite broad, right? Well, some refining will be on the agenda of the institutions, threatening to keep some people busy for at least a few months until all the innovations and their implications have been spelled out at the practical level.