Strasbourg, 06/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - During a press conference on the fringe of the plenary session in Strasbourg on Thursday, Vice President of the European Parliament Guido Podestà (Forza Italia) and EP Secretary General Julian Priestley presented the three-year plan approved on Monday by the EP Bureau with a view to preparing the Parliament for enlargement (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.7). The Parliament must rapidly make the different real estate, technical and linguistic changes that will allow it to host the new MEPs, explained Mr Podestà. He recalled that, although Bulgaria and Romania have set their target date for accession until later, "ten countries are now well and truly in the race to be on time for 2004". He stressed that the most costly effort that the Parliament will have to make concerns interpreting and translation, since the arrival of the new MEPs will increase the number of languages from 11 to 21 (on the basis of ten accessions in 2004). The Bureau, in fact, unanimously confirmed the principle whereby each MEP must be able to "speak, listen, write and read in his or her own language". While recognising that this rule has a high budgetary cost, Mr Podestà stressed that it would be inconceivable to make it compulsory for voters only to vote for candidates who speak several languages He nonetheless recalled that technical solutions must allow costs to be reduced. It is mainly a matter of using "pivot languages", which allow for the number of translations to be reduced. The use of these languages is also made necessary by the ""interpreter market" in candidate countries. Mr Podestà pointed out that there could be six pivot languages: 4 to 5 languages of the current Member States and a Slav language.
The Podestà report stresses that, for the Parliament, enlargement can only be at the expense of the principle of equal treatment for all its members. We give below the main changes concerning:
Personnel: The Podestà report evaluates at 1240 the number of officials that should be recruited for 2004, of which 830 are for linguistic needs alone. With early retirement and natural departures, he estimates that the real rise in the number of EP officials should not exceed 740.
Multilingualism: In addition to technical expenses, major recruitment of personnel is needed. The cost of enlargement is estimated at EUR 81.65 million in total, that is, double the budget foreseen for 2002.
Real estate policy: The number of MEPs will be 732 from July 2004 and this means different building work in three working premises. In addition to the adjustment of the larger number of language rooms, two large rooms (400 to 450 places) and two medium sized rooms (200 to 250 places) are required. To this must be added 640 offices in Luxembourg, 560 in Brussels, 379 in Strasbourg, and 48 in the outside offices. The final report confirms the need to extend the buildings in Brussels and Luxembourg as well as reoccupation of the IPE III in Strasbourg (see also EUROPE of 25 January).
Information policy: Information antennae (with two officials and an operational budget by way of EUR 120,000) will be opened in the candidate countries to coincide with the end of negotiations, that is, for the first, before end 2002. They will be housed, as far as possible, with the Commission delegation or, if it is impossible, in the premises of the national parliament.
According to the Podestà report, the inevitable costs to come out of the 2002 and 2003 budgets (EUR 18.9 million and EUR 34.6 million) remain modest. On the other hand, in 2004, the budgetary burden could reach EUR 155.3 million shared out between: - real estate fitting out and renting (24.8 million); - security (2.2); - information technology and telecommunications (10.1); - technical installations (2.2); - information (6.3); - publications (2.1); - observers from candidate countries (1st half of year: 3.2); - activities of new MEPs (19); - additional personnel for linguistic needs (80.3); - activities of political groups (4.2); - others (0.9).