However, a conciliation committee, an official part of the ordinary legislative procedure (OLP) provided for in the EU treaties, is sometimes referred to as a "formal trilogue meeting".
[8] Trilogue negotiations are considered important for efficient law-making in the current system of ordinary legislative procedure, as they have allowed laws to be passed much more quickly than otherwise would be possible.
[7] The trilogue became common practice as a result of changes to the codecision procedure in the Amsterdam Treaty, which allowed legislation to be adopted in first reading for the first time.
[13] A central complaint about the lack of transparency is the general rule that four-column documents are never made public, either before or after negotiations.
[7] There have also been concerns that lobbying interests with extensive social networks in Brussels may have significantly more access to information regarding ongoing trilogues than ordinary citizens.
Beginning in 2007, the European institutions formally recognized the trilogue as an important tool in the legislative process through a joint declaration.