cal interinstitutional group 8 with the goal of reaching agreement among the three institutions on the interpretation of articles .
While Parliament ’ s staff eagerly anticipated confrontation with Council representatives , the latter were faced with a substantial cultural shift . Una O ’ Dwyer , a former director at the Commission , explained that :
contacts with EP officials were virtually forbidden to colleagues in the Secretariat of the Council . It was not exactly a formal ban , but they were not encouraged in this regard . In addition , the representatives of the Member States in the Council did not want to be obliged to intervene in parliamentary committees , except as a representative of the Presidency , nor be put under pressure by Members of the European Parliament .
Jean Paul Jacqué , a former director in the Council , emphasised the instrumental role played by European Parliament President Nicole Fontaine and Vice-President Renzo Imbeni :
It was at that time that we began to invent trilogues , which were very effective , especially since at the time we generally did not adopt everything at first reading ; Parliament preferred to go as far as the second reading and we sometimes had conciliations , and gradually , the conciliations took place entirely in the form of trilogues .
A good illustration of the success of the new procedures was in legislation concerning the internal market , where Parliament had
8 . The group was composed of directors-general and directors of the three institutions and chaired by Karlheinz Neunreither , a director-general in the European Parliament .
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