How a European law is made, and where it is decided
Reporting on European legislation tends to cover two moments: the proposal and the vote. Between them sits the procedure where the text is actually written, and it is set out in a single treaty article that anybody can read. Knowing its stages tells you when a file is still movable, who can move it, and why the decisive meetings leave so little public record.
The procedure is in Article 294 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and it is called the ordinary legislative procedure because it applies to most legislation. The Commission proposes; the Parliament and the Council both have to agree; the article sets out what happens when they do not.
Three readings, with deadlines
At first reading the Parliament adopts a position on the proposal. If the Council approves that position, the act is adopted and the file is finished. If the Council adopts its own position instead, the file goes back to the Parliament for a second reading, where the treaty imposes time limits measured in months and extendable by a stated amount.
At second reading the Parliament can approve the Council's position, reject it by a majority of its component members, or amend it. Amendments go back to the Council, which may accept them all — in which case the act is adopted — or not, in which case a conciliation committee is convened with representatives of both institutions and a short deadline to agree a joint text. The joint text then needs approval by both at third reading. Failure at any of those points means no act.
The deadlines are the mechanically important part. They are what make the procedure finite, they are what gives each institution leverage at particular moments, and they are the reason a file that looks stalled can move suddenly.
Where the text is really written
Almost all of the above is held in reserve. Most files are agreed in informal negotiations between the three institutions — commonly called trilogues — which are not mentioned in Article 294 and have no procedural status in it. A deal struck there is then adopted formally at first reading, and the three readings never happen.
This is not a conspiracy; it is an efficiency with a cost. The efficiency is that files conclude in one reading instead of three. The cost is that the stage where the text is negotiated is the stage with the least documentation: no public sitting, no published amendments as they are traded, and a result that arrives as a fait accompli to be ratified.
How to follow a file
Use the institutions' own procedure files rather than news coverage, because they are timestamped and complete as to formal steps. The Parliament's committee stage is where the amendments are public: the report of the responsible committee is a document showing, line by line, what members proposed and how it was voted. That is the richest public record in the whole process and it is almost never reported.
Council positions are harder, because the Council negotiates in working parties whose documents are not all proactively published. Many are accessible on request under the access-to-documents rules, and the Council's own public register lists far more than most people expect.
When a file can still be changed
Practically: during committee stage, and through national governments before the Council fixes its position. Once a trilogue deal exists, the remaining votes are about whether to accept the package, and packages are rarely unpicked. Advocacy that starts when a file reaches plenary has started too late, which is something lobbyists know and most other interested parties learn afterwards.
The corollary is that the moments worth watching are early and dull. A committee vote on a technical amendment in a half-empty room is where the substance of a regulation is often settled, months before anybody writes a headline about it.