COSAC comprises representatives of
the national parliaments of the EU Member States and the European
Parliament © dpa
COSAC is the Conference of Community and European Affairs
Committees of Parliaments of the European Union. COSAC is made up
of six representatives from each of the national parliaments of the
25 EU Member States and six representatives of the European
Parliament. The parliaments of the candidate and acceding countries
each delegate three parliamentarians as observers to its
conferences. COSAC meets every six months in the country that
currently holds the EU presidency. Meetings of committee chairs are
held in advance of the full COSAC meetings.
Founded in 1989 in Paris as an informal forum for talks between
national parliaments, COSAC was granted a more permanent status in
1997 by the Protocol to the Treaty of Amsterdam on the role of
national parliaments in the European Union. Within the German
Bundestag, responsibility for questions relating to COSAC lies with
the Secretariat of the Committee on the Affairs of the European
Union.