Brussels, 10/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the EPP-ED Group at the European Parliament, said before the press on Thursday that the President of the Liberal Group, Pat Cox, "not only has our support" as the new President of the European Parliament but is also "our candidate", and the EPP-ED Group will do everything it can so that he wins a "clear majority". "We are keeping our word", he stressed, recalling that the Liberals had voted for the EPP-ED candidate Nicole Fontaine at the beginning of the legislature. All the national delegations of my group gave me assurance along these lines, said the CDU elected member, for whom the fact that the Parliament had a president from a "small country, from an average-sized group" would be a "good sign". In addition, quite independently of the respect that he had for both (David Martin and Julian Priestley), Mr Pöttering considers as inappropriate any "concentration" of the posts of President and of Secretary General of the Parliament in the hands of the Socialists.
Furthermore, Mr Pöttering announced that (as we had predicted) the representative of the EPP-ED at the Convention Presidium to prepare the next reform of the EU will be the elected member of the Partido popular, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, who had worked as Vice-Chairman of the Convention for drafting the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights alongside President Herzog. As the main group in Parliament, we also have the "very natural aspiration" of chairing the delegation of the Parliament at the Convention (to have 16 members), said Mr Pöttering.
Furthermore, announced Mr Pöttering, the EPP-ED Group is proposing that candidate countries should send observers to the European Parliament from the end of this year (our group will invite observers this summer, he said). These observers, who will have the right to express their views in committee, but obviously not voting rights, may take the opportunity of this period until the elections in June 2004 to prepare themselves, Mr Pöttering remarked. He recalled the very positive precedent of East German observers' participation between 1991 and 1994.
Mr Pöttering, who pointed out that the EPP-ED Group will be holding a meeting on 4 April with the chairmen of similar groups from the fifteen national parliaments, affirmed that, on a general level, he hoped as far as possible to reach common positions with other political groups, including the Socialists, on the subject of the future of Europe. Furthermore, he answered questions on:
- the chairmanship of the parliamentary committees. Mr Pöttering confirmed that, next week, the EPP-ED Group will be aiming to obtain the chair of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights (Ed.: whose current Chairman, Graham Watson, should become President of the Liberal Group) for a member of Partido popular, and that of the legal committee for a Forza Italia member.
- the situation of British Conservatives within the Group. Mr Pöttering said that Mr Duncan Smith had written to him and that he had replied, and that this situation will remain "fundamentally" the same. He specified, however, that, over the next few months, they will examine how to develop relations at the level of the parties.
- the situation in Italy. Mr Pöttering repeated that "no national group is as loyal" to the EPP-ED line as the elected Forza Italia members in voting in Parliament. "I can see absolutely no reason to demonise the Italian government", he exclaimed, noting that ministers sometimes make declarations that do not tally with the general government line (he cited the case of former French Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement).
Regarding single currency, Mr Pöttering recounted that he had withdrawn his first euros from a bank in Zermatt and that the employee, to whom he had said he hoped Switzerland would soon be in the euro zone, had replied "I do too, sooner or later". Mr Pöttering then said he had spent his first euros in Italy, in Cervinia.