Joint Declaration, issued on 4 March 1975, on the institution of a conciliation procedure between the Parliament and the Council, applicable to acts with significant financial implications.

The Treaty of Maastricht, which is signed on 7 February 1992 and comes into force on 1 November 1993, introduces the codecision procedure.

The Presidents of the Parliament and the Council signed the first codecision act on 23 March 1994; the European Parliament subsequently became a co-legislator.

European Parliament Resolution of 16 July 1998 on the new codecision procedure after Amsterdam.

European Parliament Resolution of 5 May 1999 on the Joint Declaration on the practical arrangements for the new codecision procedure (Article 251 of the EC Treaty).

The Commission gives its opinion on the effectiveness of the codecision procedure.

Joint press release by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, after the seminar organised by the three institutions in Brussels on 6 and 7 November 2000, evaluating the operation of the codecision procedure following the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam.

Adopted by the Council on 4 December 2000 and forwarded to the Nice European Council, this report evaluates the new codecision procedure eighteen months after the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty and makes recommendations for its improvement.

Diagram illustrating the consultation procedure before the Lisbon Treaty.

Diagram illustrating the conciliation procedure before the Lisbon Treaty (Joint Declaration by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, of 4 March 1975).

Diagram illustrating the assent procedure before the Lisbon Treaty.

Diagram illustrating the cooperation procedure before the Lisbon Treaty (Article 252 of the EC Treaty).

Diagram illustrating the codecision procedure before the Lisbon Treaty (Article 251 of the EC Treaty).

Classification of legislative procedures with regard to the voting system at the Council and the European Parliament's involvement.

Discussion paper on legislative procedures, including de budgetary procedure, forwarded to the Members of the Convention by the Praesidium on 24 July 2002. The document was intended to serve as a basis for the debate in the plenary session of the Convention on 12 and 13 September 2002.

The interinstitutional agreement on better law-making, adopted on 16 December 2003 by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, sets out the general principles and arrangements for cooperation between the three institutions, particularly during the legislative procedure. The aim of the agreement is to optimise the development and application of EU law.

Published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde a few days prior to the European elections of 10–13 June 2004, this article uses practical examples to demonstrate the extent of the European Parliament’s legislative power.

In this joint declaration made on 13 June 2007, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission set out their working methods with a view to making even more effective use of the full scope of the codecision procedure as provided by the Treaty establishing the European Community.

Since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009, the codecision procedure, renamed the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’, has become the main legislative procedure within the decision-making system of the European Union (EU). The ordinary legislative procedure is set out in Article 294 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. It is based on the principle of parity between the European Parliament and the Council and indicates that neither of these two institutions is able to adopt a legislative instrument without the other’s consent.

In November 2011, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union publishes an explanatory brochure on how the ordinary legislative procedure works. This guide gives a precise description of each stage of the procedure.

In accordance with the successive reforms of the Treaty establishing the European Community and the Treaty on European Union, this table presents the development of the main legal procedures governing Community policies in order to show the changes in the legal competence of the European Parliament from the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to the Treaty of Lisbon signed in 2007.