Brussels, 26/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Senate and the House of Representatives in Belgium are organising on 2 and 3 July in Brussels a conference on the parliamentary control of ESDP with the president of the European Parliament, the presidents of EU Member State parliaments and the chairpersons of the committees on foreign affairs, defence and European issues of these parliaments. The president of the Belgian Senate, Armand De Decker will present a discussion paper on the democratic control of ESDP, proposing the setting in place of a joint ad hoc assembly. According to Mr De Decker, the proposal, if endorsed by the conference on 2 and 3 July, could be taken up in the Declaration of Laeken, in December.
In his paper, Mr De Decker admits that, as soon as the WEU has finished its operational activities, there will be an "undeniably large democratic deficit" as, in this field, the EP is simply kept "informed". Also, the Assembly of ten or eighteen WEU countries" (depending on whether one counts full members or also observers, associate members and associated partners) is "not adapted to a democratic control of the policy conducted by the Fifteen", and the national parliaments have "no overall European view" of this policy (although, at the same time, they are the ones who will continue to vote on the military budgets needed to carry it out). Mr De Decker notes above all that the WEU Assembly will "exist for as long as the Treaty of Brussels survives", but that the formula defined in Lisbon by the Assembly itself whereby it would change into an "interim Assembly for Security and Defence", is not satisfactory as it does not provide for "sufficient association of the members of the European Parliament".
According to Mr De Decker, "the most realistic solution" is currently that of "forming within the European Union and alongside the WEU Assembly that would remain, an ad hoc European Assembly for Security and Defence. Such an assembly would be composed of members of the European Parliament, of EU Member State parliaments (ideally, it would be a good thing, he says, for the national MPs of the new assembly to also have a seat at the WEU Assembly). At this Assembly, where national parliamentarians and MEPs would be grouped according to political affinity and not nationality, the Presidency would be held alternately by an MEP or by a national MP.