Strasbourg, 10/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - By a rather narrow majority (255 to 139 with 101 abstentions) on Thursday, the European Parliament adopted the report by the Partido Popular MEP Alejandro Agag on a topic that should have been relatively straightforward: the Commission's annual report on competition policy, the 30th such report, for the year 2000. On top of activities in 2000 (which saw a record number of company mergers (345)), the resolution voted in by the EP also covers more political issues, such as the reform of the European competition policy.
The resolution endorsed on Thursday welcomes as a necessary step the proposed modernisation of the 1962 Regulation implementing Treaty Articles 81 and 82, "provided that this does not involve any renationalisation of competition policy". Parliament "expresses doubts regarding its practical implementation", and, although it welcomes the "spirit of decentralisation" that informs the proposal, it considers "excessive the Commission's powers under the reform proposal as regulator, judge and executor of Community rules".
Parliament calls on the Commission to "publish a table of objective indicators on privatisation in the Member States" and regrets the "report's lack of reference to the pharmaceutical industry, a key sector currently experiencing specific competition-related problems". On the institutional front, the EP condemns the "Council's lack of political will in failing to make best possible use of qualified majority voting on competition policy, thereby preventing progress in the liberalisation of sectors fundamental to the competitivity of the European economy" and "reiterates, in the context of a new revision of the Treaty in 2004, its call for the codecision procedure to apply to future legislative rules on competition policy where the Council acts by qualified majority".