| AFCO Committee | Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
|
| CFSP | The European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy.
|
| COSAC | Conference of Parliamentary Committees for EU Affairs. Box 4 provides further information.
|
| CSDP | The European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy: a key component of the CFSP.
|
| CSR | Country Specific Recommendation. (Part of the European Semester: recommendations to guide the policies of each Member State, proposed by the Commission and adopted by the Council each year.)
|
| ECON Committee | Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
|
| Eurojust | An agency of the European Union dealing with judicial co-operation in criminal matters.
|
| European Semester | The EU level-framework for co-ordinating and assessing Member States' structural reforms and fiscal policy, and for monitoring and addressing macroeconomic imbalances. See footnote 123.
|
| Europol | An agency of the European Union supporting co-operation in law enforcement.
|
| IPEX | Inter-parliamentary EU Information Exchange website. A platform for national parliaments and the European Parliament to share information concerning issues related to the European Union.
|
| LIBE Committee | Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
|
| Orange Card | Under Protocol 2 to the EU Treaties, if reasoned opinions comprising over half of the available votes are issued, the Commission must review the proposal and, if it wishes to proceed, justify why it considers that the proposal complies with the principle of subsidiarity If the Commission does proceed, a majority vote in the European Parliament, or a vote of 55% of the Member States in the European Council, will block the proposal. This is known as an Orange Card. See Box 1.
|
| Proportionality | Principle defined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union as requiring that "the content and form of Union action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Treaties". See paragraph 75.
|
| Reasoned Opinion | Under Protocol 2 to the EU Treaties, a reasoned opinion may be issued by a national parliament or chamber if it thinks that a draft EU law does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. See Boxes 1 and 2.
|
| Red Card | Under Protocol 2 to the EU Treaties, a national parliament may bring a case before the EU Court of Justice, arguing that an adopted legislative act does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. This is known as a Red Card. See Box 1. See also paragraph 92 for another meaning of 'Red Card'.
|
| Subsidiarity | Principle defined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union as: "the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level". See Box 1.
|
| TEU | Treaty on European Union.
|
| Yellow Card | Under Protocol 2 to the EU Treaties, if sufficient national parliaments or chambers issue reasoned opinions on a draft law, the Commission must review the draft law. This is known as a Yellow Card. See Boxes 1 and 2.
|
