19. Welcomes the fact that after the former Head of the Legal Service left the Agency in June 2012 to join a US-based law firm having a number of pharmaceutical industry companies as clients as senior counsel, the Executive Director of the Agency launched a review of his work as Head of the Legal Service, Chair of the Joint Committee, Chair of the Disciplinary Committee and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Procurement and Contracts; acknowledges that no evidence of conflicts of interest nor breach of obligations provided in Articles 11 and 11a of the Staff Regulations could be identified; welcomes the fact that in accordance wi ...[+++]th Article 16 of the Staff Regulations, the Executive Director imposed some restrictions to the activities of the former Head of Legal Service for a period of two years following his leaving the Agency; calls on the Agency to provide the discharge authority with detailed information on those restrictions;

Given the important role played by the Joint Committee, including in politically sensitive matters such as environmental and labour standards, it is important that the Commission ensures that Parliament is kept fully informed and consulted about the Committee’s work and also about future amendments to the Treaty.

Given the important role assigned to the Joint Committee, including in politically sensitive matters such as environmental and labour standards, it is important that the Commission ensures that Parliament is kept fully informed and consulted about the Committee's work in conformity with the provisions of the Framework Agreement on relations between the European Parliament and the European Commission.

One point is to reduce employment equity gaps and the other is to improve union-management consultations and increase the use of informal conflict resolution.

We do have labour-management consultations.

I should point out to Members that the Council working group agreed unanimously to recommend to the Council that the type of committee in the action programme should be modified to a mixed committee, a combination of the management and advisory procedures, thereby increasing the power of the individual Member States.