According to Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union, the Commission has a duty to consult citizens and representative associations in all areas of Union action.
These consultations are a mechanism whereby public diplomacy practitioners can express their views to lawmakers in the course of setting policy orientations and drafting legislation.
Stakeholder consultations – collect information and views from stakeholders when the Commission is preparing a policy initiative or evaluating existing interventions.
In order to improve its consultation processes, the Commission adopted a set of ’General Principles and Minimum Standards for Consultation of Interested Parties’. The EU highly values consultation with interested parties and the collection and use of expertise which are both an integral part of the process.
These principles and standards provide a framework for consulting stakeholders, which ensures transparency and access to consultation, feedback to contributors and a minimum reply time of 8 weeks. This action is linked to the impact assessment procedure and will, as a first step, apply to those initiatives subject to impact assessments.
The European Commission regularly seeks the views of stakeholders when it develops policy and legislation.
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO A PUBLIC CONSULTATION
FINDING A PUBLIC CONSULTATION
The European Commission publishes past, ongoing, and upcoming public consultations on the Have Your Say web portal:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/ initiatives.
All public consultations are searchable per policy area, topic, stage, keywords, date, type of acts, and documents.
ATTACHING A WRITTEN CONTRIBUTION