Brussels, 19/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - Using the procedure without a report, the European Parliament last week gave its opinion on the draft regulation on freezing terrorists' assets, on which the General Affairs Council reached political agreement on 10 December. Parliament is simply being consulted on the matter and is particularly eager to be consulted on the list of international terrorists and terrorist organisations that will be added in annex to the regulation once the EU has agreed on the list. Parliament says that annexes form part of the legislation to which they are attached, which is why it wants to be consulted when the list of terrorist natural and legal persons, groups and organisations connected with terrorism is drawn up or amended, adding that Parliament reserves the right to defend its prerogatives at the European Court of Justice should the Council not involve Parliament in the procedure. MEPs also want the regulation to expire on 31 December 2003. The regulation sets out (only for international terrorists and groups) how the common position that the same General Affairs Council arrived should be put into practice, regarding the freezing of "internal" EU and international terrorists' assets. The regulation also includes a list of terrorists and terrorist groups.
At the extraordinary session of the European Parliament on 17 December that focused on the Laeken Summit, the President of the Public Liberties Committee, British Liberal Democrat Graham Watson, told the plenary that Parliament could not continue to give its opinion of documents that it had only partial knowledge of. He said that the previous week, they had voted on a regulation without knowing what was in the annexes - at the very moment that everyone was talking about transparency. He warned that if things continued like this, Parliament should consider taking its case to the Court of Justice.