Strasbourg, 04/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - Giving its opinion on Thursday morning according to emergency procedure on the draft regulation presented by the Commission on freezing the financial assets of "certain persons and entities with a view to combating international terrorism", the European Parliament approved the Commission's proposal (by 417 to 44 and 18 abstentions). It did, however, amend it on key points (see on this subject yesterday's EUROPE, p.12 and of 3 October, p.6). EUROPE has reason to believe that the Council, which had formally announced on Wednesday morning that it was associating itself with the Commission's request for urgency, finally decided not to do so. It pointed out that the General Affairs Council will not be able to give its opinion Monday next, on one hand because of protests concerning the legal base and, on the other, because of a meeting scheduled at the UN on Friday when a list proper to the United Nations should be adopted on the "persons and entities" in question. The annex to the Regulation on which the Parliament voted is a list presented by the United States.
This is precisely why, although agreeing with the Commission's initiative, the European United Left/Nordic Greens Left Group was not able to approve the draft regulation. As its president Francis Wurtz told the plenary, the group considers the method imposed "unacceptable" in that it demands that the Parliament give its urgent opinion on a list of organisations transmitted 'without any explanation" by the United States, a list which "could be amended without our control".
Voting against were: all the GUE/NGL members present except 11 who abstained (Bakopoulos, Fiebiger, Gonzalez Alvarez, Jové Peres, Kaufmann, Koulouianos, Manisco, Markov, Marset Campos, Puerta, Uca); - ten members of the Greens/EFA Group (Boumediene-Thiery, Gahrton, Lambert, Lannoye, Lucas, McKenna, Mayol I Raynal, Rod, States, Turmes, Wuori, Wyn), while 24 voted in favour; - the majority of the EDD Group (Belder, Blokland, van Dam voted for); - among the non-attached, de Gaulle and Le Pen (the majority voted in favour; Gollnisch, Lang and Martinez abstained). All the EPP-ED Group voted for, as well as the Socialist Group (except Goebbels, Poos and Paasilinna, who abstained) and the Liberal Group (except Lynne, who abstained).
The amendments approved by the Parliament are:
- The title of the regulation has been changed (Pirker amendment, for the EPP-ED) in order to specify that measures are "temporary", in the context of the "fight against terrorism" (the precision "international" has been dropped). Two other amendments specify that the Commission will, within one year after the enforcement of the regulation, propose review of the regulation on the basis of the motivated proposal, and that the regulation must expire on 31 December 2003.
- Another Pirker amendment (adopted by 228 to 210 and 23 abstentions) stipulates that the Council, before introducing possible changes to the annex - by qualified majority as the Commission proposes - will do so on the basis of a "motivated" proposal by the latter, and "after consultation of the European Parliament, if necessary on a confidential and accelerated basis (…) in conformity with a rapid procedure allowing the addition or suppression of names of organisations".
- An amendment by Socialist, Liberal and Greens/EFA groups calls for the Council to "amend annex I without delay, so that the names of legal persons appearing on it are accompanied by sufficiently detailed information allowing the persons to be truly identified, in order to remove suspicion from other persons with identical or similar names".
- An amendment by the EPP-ED, Socialist, Liberal and Greens/EFA Groups replaces, in Article 6 of the draft regulation, the word "presumption" by "suspicion" (should there be "reasonable suspicion" that a person or entity is acting on behalf of a person or entity cited in Annex I).
- A "whereas" stating that one should envisage "certain exceptions" to minimise the risks weighing on Community interests was deleted (Pirker amendment for the EPP-ED, Terron I Cusi for the PES, Watson and Ludford for the Liberals and Buijtenweg for the Greens/EFA).
- A new article was added (amendment of the same four groups) specifying that Article 308 of the Treaty is a legal base of the regulation, and that the Court of Justice of the European Communities is competent for appeals made by legal or natural persons targeted by the regulation.
- A new article (Pirker amendment) was added specifying that "appeal to the jurisdiction of one of the Member States or the Court of Justice of the EC does not entail the suspension of the decision to freeze assets".
Alain Kirvine and Roseline Vachetta (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire) were opposed to a regulation whereby "we are simply called on to place our confidence in the CIA". They said: "we propose adding to the list, "as 28th organisation, the firm TotalFinaElf, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the world and directly linked to terrorist activities, especially in Africa".