Brief items for which space was lacking in earlier editions
*** EU/enlargement/budget: European and Polish members of the EU/Poland Joint Parliamentary Committee asked the EU to examine the possibility, for the most advanced countries, of using, in 2002 already, credits earmarked for the new member countries for that year.
*** EU/Commission/Spain: Asked about his alleged ambition of becoming the President of the European Commission, in an interview with La Repubblica, Spanish Prime Minister Aznar replied: "Now I like doing what I am. I'm too young to start thinking about the future".
*** EPP/Summit of Nice: Before the Nice Summit, the leader of the European People's Party, Wilfried Martens, denounced the inability of European leaders to agree over essential reforms for the EU's future, stating that the Socialists (in government in twelve of the EU's fifteen countries) were opportunists who above all were looking at the polls. Their triumph is "empty" and "cannot last", said Martens, for whom the members of the EPP "can regain power in Europe, and deserve to".
*** EP/Summit of Nice: German Social-Democrat Jo Leinen, EP co-rapporteur on the IGC, has called for the distribution of seats in the EP to take further account in future of the size of the population of Member States. Depending on their country of origin MEPs currently represent between 80,000 and 800,000 electors, he observed, calling on the Treaty of Nice to bridge that gap as a matter of urgency.
*** Fourth World/Summit of Nice: In its November information sheet, the Association Fourth World Solidarity, says that EU Heads of State or Government must now engage in in-depth reflection on how the European Charter of Fundamental Rights should be "implemented, monitored in its application, and evaluated, revised and improved". According to Fourth World, "the Charter is not good enough to be incorporated in its present form in the Treaties", especially as "it gives a narrow view of certain rights which are nevertheless expressed more explicitly in the revised European Social charter or the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers".
*** EP/Turkey: Werner Langen MEP (CDU) asked for explanations on the treatment suffered by the German member of the EP Feleknas Uca (PDS) who, at a meeting of the EU/Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee to which she belongs, was prevented by the Turkish authorities from saying some words in German, having made a short address in Kurdish and Turkish. I do not at all share the goals of the PDS or Ms. Uca, but consider it her right to speak out, said Mr. Langen, who has written to Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Yilmaz, the Turkish ambassador to the EU, Mr. Ayol, and Commissioner Verheugen.
*** EP/Palestine: Luisa Morgantini, member of the United Left Group in the European Parliament, is taking part in the initiative "Me, Woman, I'm going to Palestine" organised by Italian women; from 2 December, alternating each week, groups of women are going to Palestine to meet women's associations, visit villages, hospitals and bombed places, says a press release.
*** EP/human rights: In a question to the Council and the European Commission, Radical MEP Olivier Dupuis asked what the EU intended doing to encourage a "dynamic democratic policy" in Algeria: the MEP denounces in particular the ban on the WAFA Party, "yet constituted according to lawful procedures". Mr. Dupuis also accused Russia of proceeding with its "work, slow but systematic, of strangling" Georgia, through the introduction of a visa obligation for Georgians wanting to go to Russia, except for those living in Abkhazia or Southern Ossetia. As for Dutch Labour MEP, Jan Marius Wiersma, he denounced the disappearance "and probable murder" of the Ukraine journalist Georgy Gongadze, saying that, according to the press, the orders for the removal of the journalist may have come from very high, possibly even President Kuchma.
*** EP/Italy: At the opening of its plenary session in Brussels last week, the European Parliament celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of former Italian Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino who, at the Conference of Messine in January 1955 had, with his ECSC colleagues, laid down the bases of the Treaty of Rome. Let's hope that the spirit of Messine inspires the negotiators of the current IGC, declared Ms. Fontaine in plenary, recalling that Gaetano Martino had also been President of the European Parliament. The EP President also took part in a ceremony in which she unveiled, before the EP hemicyle in Brussels, a bronze statue of Gaetano Martino, in the presence of his children Carla and Antonio Martino.
*** EP/Turkey: Luxembourg Socialist Robert Goebbels pointed out to us (see Echoes of 20/21 November) that, when voting on the amendment to the Morillon Report, which stated that Turkey was not a European country, he had at first voted in favour of this "Front National" amendment by mistake, but that he had immediately rectified his vote, considering that Turkey was indeed a European country, and had "its place in the EU".