COREPER, from French Comité des représentants permanents, is the Committee of Permanent Representatives in the European Union, made up of the headordeputy head of mission from the EU member states in Brussels.[1]
COREPER's defined role is to prepare the agenda for the ministerial Council of the European Union meetings; it may also take some procedural decisions. It oversees and coordinates the work of some 250 committees and working parties made up of civil servants from the member states who work on issues at the technical level to be discussed later by COREPER and the Council.
The COREPER is chaired by the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Article 240 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union lays down the legal basis of COREPER.
There are in fact two committees within the COREPER:
Coreper I, comprising the Deputy Permanent Representatives, prepares the ground for the following Council configurations:
Coreper II, comprising the Permanent Representatives, prepares for the other configurations:
Representatives of the Council Secretariat from the relevant Directorates and from the Legal Directorate are also present.
Both Coreper I and Coreper II are, in turn, prepared by two other groups of high ranking diplomats.[4][5][6][7] Coreper I is prepared by the Mertens Group, while Coreper II is prepared by the Antici Group.
Weekly meetings are held in private; the agenda of the meeting is divided into
They divide the ministerial agenda into three categories:
An item may be described internally as a false B point - this is to give the public impression as a B point that ministers are actively debating it because of its importance when in fact it could have been treated as an A point because negotiation and compromise has already taken place in COREPER. Relatively few decisions are taken by ministers on true B points: they are usually sent back to COREPER until they can be returned as an A point or a false B point.
The deliberations and decisions of the Council itself under the co-decision procedure are, unlike all other Council meetings, including COREPER and Council working group meetings, public.