In the late afternoon of Tuesday 3 July, the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, was to meet representatives of Parliament's interpreters for the first time since their social movement began 29 days ago (see EUROPE 12052, 12049).
“We intend to ask Tajani to play his role as guarantor of social dialogue”, which he is currently delegating to the Secretary General, Klaus Welle, a union source told EUROPE.
Among the requests of the interpreters' representatives, they will call for the appointment by common agreement of a mediator, who will be independent, even if he or she is internal to Parliament.
On Tuesday morning, a dozen MEPs, including Edouard Martin (S&D, France) and José Bové (Greens/EFA, France), took action to express their solidarity with the interpreters, some of whom have been requisitioned to cover plenary session debates. By blocking technicians' access to their workstations, they delayed the start of the debate taking stock of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU by around half an hour.
This initiative, which came as a surprise even to the interpreters, was harshly criticised by Tajani, who said that the MEPs had acted as unionists. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, considers that the action would not have taken place if a debate with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, or the French President, Emmanuel Macron, had been scheduled. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion and Solenn Paulic)