Strasbourg, 16/03/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Liberal Group considers that the European Parliament should seize the opportunity provided by the presentation of the draft report by the EU Court of Auditors on the spending of the EP political groups, in order, at last, to begin serious work on the "substantial parliamentary reform" which is required, Pat Cox, President of the Liberal Group, told the press. The draft report, said the Irish MEP, must first of all be submitted to the Parliament Bureau, and those interested have ten weeks in which to reply, before the elaboration of a definitive text, in accordance with the "contradictory" procedure of the Court of Auditors. This report is on two lines of the budget, 3707 and 3708, concerning, respectively, the information campaigns of the political groups and their administrative expenses (for a total of around EUR 30 million). Mr Cox pointed out that his group had been contacted last year by the Court of Auditors, to which it had given its "full cooperation" and access to its accounts. He said he did not know what was in the draft report but first echoes received by him confirm that his group is "clean", he said. Those who are found to have committed "irregularities" should "dance to the music".
Pat Cox recalled that the agreement concluded last year between his group and that of the EPP concerning the election of the Parliament president did not only cover the conditions of this election (Ed.: the EPP candidate, Mrs Fontaine, first of all, and a Liberal candidate, Mr Cox, in 2002) but also on the "needed parliamentary reform". He said he explained to Mr Pöttering in "forthright terms" the "frustration" felt within his group regarding the lack of initiatives on this reform. The group had been at the fore in the battle for reform of the European Commission and "we should apply the same logic to ourselves". Among the "wide variety" of questions already tackled in this context, but without any solution, Mr Cox cited the statute of officials and of their assistants, reform concerning staff and information policy.
The Conference of Presidents (Ms Fontaine and the presidents of the political groups) discussed, on Thursday afternoon, the draft report by the Court of Auditors. EUROPE has reason to believe that most of the EP's outgoing groups will have been brought into question for one reason or other (in some cases, not for obvious irregularities, but for the disorder of their accounts). The Court of Auditors would not cite the groups by name, but did give a detailed description of the behaviour of some of them.