Strasbourg, 05/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - Will the Convention that will be meeting for the first time at the end of the month really be able to operate in a transparent manner? Various MEPs doubt it. Ms Maes from the Green/EFA group, for example, fears that the way Chairman Giscard d'Estaing is planning to organise things would encourage "monologues". The Chairman himself has been given positive feedback by the President of the EPP/ED, Mr Pöttering (whose group Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had been a member of, after having been the President of the Liberal group) and also by the President of the Socialist group, Mr Baron, who said the Chairman had been an active and hard-working Member of the European Parliament who had not hesitated to take on complex issues like subsidiarity.
Asked about Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's comments, the Co-President of the Green/EFA group, Mr Cohn-Bendit, suggested that the Nice Treaty was out of date and that his group had said a year ago that Nice had to be forgotten because it had settled nothing in terms of enlargement.