Unfinished business: what happens to legislation that has not been completed by the end of a parliamentary term?
All votes taken by the Parliament before elections remain legally valid for the next Parliament. This means that after the elections the new Parliament will pick up files where the previous Parliament left them and will continue with the next stage in the decision-making procedure.
For legislative business that hasn’t reached the plenary before the elections, there is no legally valid Parliamentary position and therefore Parliament's internal rules of procedure stipulate that in these cases the work done on them (e.g. in committee) during the previous parliamentary term lapses. However, at the beginning of the new parliamentary term, the new Parliament's Conference of Presidents – the EP President and political group leaders – may decide to continue the work already done on those files (rule 240 of the EP's Rules of procedure).
