1. Assembleia da República

2. IPEX Correspondents Meeting 15 th and 16 th November Den Haag Symbols in IPEX

3. Assembleia da República The main goals of the IPEX symbols: 1)The IPEX symbols indicate the general status of a parliamentary document; 2)The IPEX symbols give a preliminary indication of specific issues which a Parliament might have concerning a dossier; 3)The IPEX symbols allow users to get basic information regardless of the specific documents language version.

4. Assembleia da República Reasons to change: 1)The IPEX Board has recognized the need for easily recognizable symbols which give users a clear indication concerning the status of a proposal or document; 2)There was a general concern that the current set of symbols are not being uniformly applied by Chambers/Parliaments on IPEX; 3)The debate and conclusions of the working group II at IPEX Correspondents meeting in Ljubljana.

5. Assembleia da República National Parliaments shall use these symbols to indicate the progress of scrutiny, regardless of the subsidiarity procedure. No information available (default setting) Scrutiny is in progress Scrutiny is complete The conclusion of the scrutiny varies from one Chamber/Parliament to another, so each national Parliament is responsible for the accuracy of this symbol, according to its own internal scrutiny procedure, and for the information available about the specific scrutiny system of each Chamber/Parliament. Symbols indicating General Scrutiny Status

6. Assembleia da República A reasoned opinion has been issued Please note that the application of this symbol requires the following before it is applied: 1)A national Parliament finds that a proposal is in breach of subsidiarity 2)A reasoned opinion has been issued. This symbol may be used at the same time as the symbol This symbol can’t be used with the symbol Alert Symbols

7. Assembleia da República A veto has been issued A national Parliament makes known its opposition to bridging clauses. This symbol only refers to the cases foreseen in the Treaty where a national Parliament makes known its opposition within six months of the date of a notification of the procedures envisaged in articles 48/7 TEU or 81/3 TFEU. European Commission answer(s) Alert Symbols

8. Assembleia da República There is an important information to exchange This symbol indicates that a Chamber/Parliament has specific information it wishes to exchange with other parliaments. Issues relating to proportionality as well as parliamentary concerns relating to subsidiarity which are discovered after the eight week period referred to in the Lisbon Treaty shall be assigned by the symbol. This symbol may also be used to indicate comments sent to the Commission with regard to the Political Dialogue. This symbol may be used for other important reasons defined by a national Parliament (for example a specific political concern a parliament may have on a particular issue). Alert Symbols

9. Assembleia da República Subsidiarity procedure is in progress and there are possible concerns It was noted a significant uncertainty around the use of this symbol. Some correspondents didn’t use it because they didn’t feel allowed to publicly reveal a political concern of their Chamber/Parliament until it was officially adopted by the political body through an official document Some correspondents thought it was useless and time loosing to add a symbol that need to be removed anyway at the end of the scrutiny. Just a residual number of correspondents used regularly and correctly this symbol. So the IPEX Board decided that this symbol was no longer in use as of 22 nd June 2012. Symbol removed

10. Assembleia da República Questions? Maria João Costa mjcosta@ar.parlamento.pt