European Parliament's committees are primarily responsible for preparing the legislative work for Parliament's plenary, on the basis of which it adopts legislative resolutions.

Their core task is to draw up reports on legislative proposals that have been referred to Parliament, or on which Parliament has been consulted, and on own-initiative reports.

Parliament has 20 standing committees, and 2 subcommittees, each responsible for an area of community policy: foreign affairs, environment, development, international trade, budget etc, and working methods appropriate to its areas of expertise.

Special committees are sometimes created on an ad-hoc basis to address a specific topic.

Each committee elects a chairman and four vice-chairmen for consecutive periods of two and a half years in each parliamentary term. Each committee has its own secretariat.

Committees meet in public, once or twice a month, generally during the weeks that follow plenary sittings in Strasbourg. The meetings are broadcasted live (through EP Live).

KEY ITEMS OF THE COMMITTEES:

Trilogue (2nd part) on "Information exchange mechanism in the field of energy" in ITRE

Roaming in ITRE

Equal pay for equal work in FEMM

Common system for taxing financial transactions in ECON

Borders control in LIBE

ACTA in INTA

Breast implants in ENVI

Resource-efficient Europe in ENVI

Implementation of the ECI in AFCO

Internal Market Scoreboard in IMCO

Full agenda : go to List of Committees (cf below)

PUBLIC HEARINGS, JOINT MEETINGS,WORKSHOPS, CONFERENCES:

Hearing on "Connecting Europe: Forms of financing, priorities, synergies between the sectors" by ITRE and TRAN

Hearing on "CEF" by ITRE

Hearing on "Budgetary control of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Stability Mechanism(ESM)" by CONT

Hearing on "The feasibility of transferable fishing concessions in the context of the CFP reform" by PECH

Conference on "Regional actors as vectors of peace by AFET

Public hearing on "Justice in the Arab Spring Countries" by DROI

Workshop on "The Efficiency of the use of Financial Instruments" by BUDG

Workshop on "Smart Regulation and EU Administrative Law - Making the Union more accessible to citizens" by JURI

Workshop on "EU competition framework and the food chain in the new CAP" by AGRI

Workshop on "The effectiveness of the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP)" by ITRE

Public hearing on "Growth & Mobility: Modernising the professional qualifications Directive" by IMCO

Workshop on "Smart Regulation and EU Administrative Law - Making the Union more accessible to citizens" by AFCO

Hearing on "Review of the Accounting and Transparency Directives: the new country by country reporting requirements" by JURI

Public Hearing on "Defining the future EU culture and media programmes" by CULT