Munich /Paris, 22/02/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Bavarian Minister for European Affairs, Reinhold Bocklet (who for many years was a Euro-MP: Ed.) said that the agenda of the Intergovernmental Conference on the EU's institutional reform had to be broadened, and, in particular called for: - inclusion in the Treaty of a precise catalogue of competencies, so as to strictly limit competencies at European Union level; - the right of initiative for the Council and Parliament, so as "to increase democratic legitimacy"; - more account to be taken of the demographic weight to Member States in the distribution of seats in the European Parliament; - a greater role for the regions, through, for example, introducing an autonomous right of the Committee of the Regions to refer to the EU Court of Justice. In addition, while speaking out in principle in favour of the extension of qualified majority voting, Mr. Bocklet recalled that, in a resolution adopted unanimously on 4 February, the Bubdesrat called on the German Government to observe in each precise case, during the IGC, whether a majority decision is in the Germany's interest or not. (You may recall that in the last stages of negotiations which led to the Amsterdam Treaty, Germany had been one of the countries that had most slowed down extension of qualified majority voting: Ed.).
The European Movement-France, chaired by Anne-Maris Idrac, on the other hand, calls for a generalisation of qualified majority voting "to all matters of common interest, like taxation", and considers that the field of application of enhanced cooperation needs extending to enable a vanguard of States wanting to go further together" to be able to do so. The European Movement also states that the Commission has not to become "a place where the interest of States confront each other" and pleads in favour of a greater balance in the decision-making process, that has to take more account of the "demographic importance of all". Noting that the Commission's opinion on the IGC seems to "go in the right direction", the European Movement-France considers that the IGC should "reaffirm, in a text, the constitutional scope, values, principles and procedures which are the foundations of European construction"
Gil-Robles suggests "the path of inter-institutional agreements
So as to achieve a "more exhaustive, less diluted outcome" than what could be secured in the Intergovernmental Conference, we should, at the same time as the IGC, take the path of "inter-institutional agreements", said Jose Maria Gil-Robles, President of the International European Movement (and former European Parliament President). Recalling that, in the history of European integration, inter-institutional agreements had increased the possibilities of "democratic control, within the limits of the Treaty, but without going through the weighty procedures of ratification", Gil-Robles defended this idea before Commission President Romano Prodi and the Commissioner responsible for institutional reform, Michel Barnier