Brief items for which space was lacking in earlier editions
*** IGC/EP/Commission: The Chair of the European Parliament committee on Budgetary Control., Diemut Theato, welcomed the European Commission's contribution to the IGC suggesting the creation of a position of European Prosecutor, exclusively responsible for the protection of the Union's financial interests. The Commission must know that it has an ally in the European Parliament, he said, recalling that the Committee had been fighting for years for this "legal void" to be filled. Ms. Theato also noted that several Member States were energetically fighting such a proposal. As for Olivier Dupuis, member of the Bonino List, he congratulated the Benelux for having proposed the election of the president of the European Commission; according to him, the direct election of the Commission's president through universal suffrage, from 2009, is the only formula to counterbalance the "ongoing intergovernmental drift", and provide the EU "not only with a face and phone number, but also a head".
*** IGC/majority qualified voting/third countries: The Southern Cross Group, organisation founded in Brussels at the beginning of the year, and essentially made up of Australians and New Zealanders fighting for the eradication of legal barriers and practices which "prevent mobility in the global community", has called on the IGXC to introduce qualified majority voting in Council on an issue the members hold dear - extending social security rights to third country nationals living legally in the EU. In a press release, the organisation stresses that, currently, 13 million third country nationals legally working in the EU suffer discrimination on this issue, due to their nationality.
*** Commission/federalists: Jo Leinen MEP, Chair of the Union of European Federalists, welcomed the speech made by President Prodi who, in Strasbourg last week, warned against an intergovernmental drift in the EU. This speech is an excellent basis for the debate on "governance in Europe" that needs engaging in 2001, says Jo Leinen, for whom "the time is right to dissolve the three pillars" of the EU Treaty.
*** EP/United Kingdom: British Conservative Edward McMillan-Scott MEP criticised the proposal Tony blair made in Warsaw of creating a second chamber of the European Parliament, and waxed ironic over Robin Cook who said that such an initiative would not require additional personnel: there would need to be "at least 700 new Eurocrats to serve the members that Blair wants in his "Euro-Senate", he said. As for Christopher Beazley, also British Conservative, he commented: "It's an old idea. Recycled").
*** EU/Turkey: a PKK spokesman in Europe told a press conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week that the solution to the Kurdish problem had to be included in the partnership agreement for Turkey's membership of the EU as "precondition" to Ankara's accession. In addition, he called on the fifteen to provide themselves with a "genuine policy towards the Kurds".
*** EU/College of Europe: When opening the Academic Year of the College of Europe in Brugge last week, Greek Foreign Minister Georges Panpandreou developed ideas on the future integration of the Balkan countries into the EU, described Athens' attempts at "turning over a new leaf in its relations with Turkey", and proposed the creation of a third campus of the College of Europe, in Thessaloniki (after those of Brugge and Natolin, in Poland).
*** EU/UN: Speaking on behalf of the European Union before the UN General Assembly's Financial committee, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, said, according to AFP, that the country of the EU's share in the ordinary budget of the United Nations should be cut. Mr. Levitte recalled that, in 1998, the EU represented 29.5% of world GNP, but that it contributed 36.6% of the budget "in time and without pre-conditions".
*** EU/France: In a statement adopted in Paris last week, autonomist and independence organisations of the "last French possessions", demanded the "official recognition of the Kanak, Maori, Basque, Catalan, Corsican, Breton, Guadeloupian, Guyanian and Martinique peoples", and the right to be "part of the European Union as legal subjects".
*** PES/Italy: The Bureau of the Party of European Socialists stressed in a declaration published following "the recent decision of some former Socialists to backing the right-wing coalition in Italy and at the saem time request membership of the PES", that the European Socialist party in Italy has two member parties, Democratici di sinistra and Socialisti Democratici Italiani. The PES adds that, by joining the "right coalition of Berlusconi, Fini and Bossi", these people "are automatically excluded from the political family made up of socialist, social-democrat and labour parties which cooperate within the PEs".