Brussels, 01/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Wednesday, the Chairman of the Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, will meet Pat Cox, President of the EP, and will then address the Conference of Presidents, explained a Parliament spokesperson who welcomed the fact that Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's team included two EP officials (Ricardo Passos and Maria José Martinez Iglesias). He said, however, that the plan at this stage to hold only one "two or three hour" Convention plenary session a month (on Thursdays) was pretty minimal. Another EP spokesperson said that Inigo Mendez de Vigo, and MEP who will be a member of the Praesidium, was planning to unveil a draft regulation for the Convention, and no doubt the other institutions would be doing the same thing (the Convention that drew up the Charter of Fundamental Rights did not adopt any regulation).
A spokesperson for the Socialist group announced the group would be holding a large-scale conference on the Convention on 4/5 March, preceded by a meeting with Socialist groups from national parliaments on 11 February and a meeting of Socialist and Social Democrat members of the Convention on 27 February.