The summer in Brussels is over and the European Parliament is back in session, following a month-long break in activity. This hiatus means that little has happened with the draft conflict minerals regulation over the past weeks. You will recall that the July meeting of the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) led to a vote in favor of entering into trialogue negotiations with the Council of the EU and the European Commission. These negotiations are now underway. In the meantime, the INTA committee met on August 31, but it did not discuss the draft conflict minerals regulation.

The next meeting of the INTA committee is scheduled for September 21 – 22. We expect that the issue of conflict minerals will be high on their list of priorities and it seems likely that there will be some substantive discussion of the draft regulation or at least the status of the trialogue negotiations at that meeting.