The setting could not be less spectacular—one of the more nondescript rooms in the European Parliament’s glass towers overlooking Place Luxembourg in Brussels, where a handful of officials gather with armfuls of papers. At intervals, members of the Parliament’s catering staff silently walk round the room offering tea and coffee. Unless you were involved, you wouldn’t know that the meeting—one of around 1,000 so-called “trialogue” meetings to take place in 2013—was actually happening. […] Around 80 percent of EU laws are now agreed at first reading, with research by the parliament estimating that the average law agreed at first reading...