Strasbourg, 11/07/2000 (Agence Europe) - As EUROPE mentioned briefly on 7 July, the European Parliament's temporary committee responsible for studying the Echelon intelligence system (set up by the United States with the participation of some European countries) held its inaugural meeting last week. It elected Carlos Coelho as Chairman, Portuguese member of the EPP, and, as Deputy Chairs, Dutch Liberal Elly Plooij-Van Gorsel, Neil McCormick, of the Scottish National Party, and Giuseppe Di Lello, Partido della refondazione comunista. The rapporteur is Gerhard Schmidt, German Social-Democrat. The next meeting will be held in Strasbourg on 5 September to decide on how work should be organised: in Brussels on 11 September, the rapporteur will set out his plan of action.
As for Elena Paciotti and Gianni Vattimo, Democratici di sinistra, they said that, while having wanted a committee of enquiry, they hoped that the ad hoc committee would undertake an awareness-raising action so that, as Mrs. Paciotti said, solutions may be found "to a problem that must affect the consciences of many people". Mrs. Paciotti (who is an alternate member within the ad hoc committee) acknowledges that the powers of a Parliamentary committee of enquiry would anyway be modest compared to those of national parliaments, at least in certain countries, Italy included, where parliamentary committees may call on witnesses and obtain documents, but she considers that Parliament should have taken a swifter decision, as early as February. "We voted against the amendments that would have 'drowned' the Echelon affair in a more general search into industrial espionage", Mr. Vattimo added. There will certainly be resistance when the committee begins its work, especially on the British side, he observed, but it is not at all sure that they will impose their point of view.
The fact that a majority of Parliament should have opted for a temporary committee led to reactions on the part of groups that had defended the committee of enquiry, especially the Greens, who regret the choice of an "eyewash instrument", not allowing for access to confidential documents, and, on behalf of Alleanza nazionale, Christiana Muscardini, who recalled that 180 members of different parties had just signed a document calling for the setting up of a committee of enquiry. According to her, the EP's vote highlights the economic clout of the United States and the ambiguity in the position of certain countries.