Brussels, 24/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a letter addressed to President Prodi on 23 January, the European Lista Bonino members state that the "draft regulation on the statute and the funding of European political parties, that the Commission is preparing to adopt, runs counter to the spirit and the letter of the Nice Treaty" and that, if the Commission adopts it, "we shall not hesitate to use all the appropriate legal means available to cancel a decision that seems to be no more than a meagre "consolation price" given to certain EP groups in order to obtain their consent to ratification of the Treaty of Nice". According to the Radical MEPs, these proposals are in contradiction with the decisions taken by the European Council of Nice which, while amending the former Article 191 on political parties, specified that the "provisions on the funding of European political parties is applied on one and the same basis for all political forces represented within the European Parliament". MEPs reproach the Commission for claiming to regulate the criteria for receiving funding so as to create, among the political groups currently represented at the EP, series A and series B categories, while the Radical party is the only transnational party. Noting that the Commission had last week postponed adoption of this text, the MEPs say they hope the objections raised might convince the Commission to "abandon" the project. "How is it thinkable" that each year over EUR 7 million of the Community budget is released to fund "activities - and above all the salaries of officials of "European" parties - on the basis of such a fragile and incoherent proposal?", ask Emma Bonino, Marco Pannella, Gianfranco Dell'Alba, Olivier Dupuis, Marco Cappato, Benedetto Della Vedova and Maurizio Turco. They add: "As if the already considerable allocations granted by the European Parliament to the political groups was not enough!".
President of the Party of European Socialists, Rudolf Scharping welcomed the Commission's initiative while calling for greater transparency on funding matters. In his view, in particular, the regulation should also provide for clear provisions, including restrictions, on donations to parties. The European political parties and their political groups had made such a request in a common proposal in February 2000, he recalled.