Brussels, 08/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - "I am now waiting for formal requests and, if necessary, I will then start the procedure according to the rules". Thus, Wilfried Martens, President of the European People's Party, discussing the possible expulsion of the ÖVP from the EPP, just days before the special meeting of the EPP Political Bureau, on 10 February in Brussels, to discuss the possible consequences of the formation of a government coalition in Austria between the ÖVP, an EPP member party, and the FPÖ led by Jörg Haider. It will be recalled that Belgium's PSC filed a request for the expulsion of the ÖVP, with the backing of the Italian PPI (see yesterday's EUROPE, pages 5 and 6). On Monday, the CVP (the Flemish Social Christian party) announced that it would request on Thursday the creation within the EPP of a Surveillance Committee charged with monitoring the new Austrian Government's respect for democratic principles. A suspension or expulsion procedure is triggered by requests by at least three parties out of the 37 EPP membre parties, in three different countries.
Since the rules applying to the case of a suspension or expulsion from the EPP require at least one month's notice before such a decision can be taken, a vote by the Political Bureau on the Österreichische Volkspartei could not take place before 6 April. Such votes use simple majority, recalls an EPP statement, which explains that, in the EPP Political Bureau, the ÖVP has 7 votes, while the two biggest member parties, the CDU and the Partido Popular, have 18 and 15 respectively.
The statement also notes that, since its founding in 1976, the EPP has expelled only one party, Portugal's CDS (now renamed CDS-PP, its members sit in the European Parliament in the Union for Europe Group, Ed.), doing so in 1993, "when the party took an anti-European direction".