Strasbourg, 05/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, briefly defended on Monday evening, during the opening of the plenary in Strasbourg, his decision not to follow the recommendation of the EP Committee on Legal Affairs to challenge the legal base of the regulation on the European Company Statute before the Court of Justice (see EUROPE of 2 February, p.8). German Christian Democrat Klaus-Heiner Lehne recalled that the EPP-ED Group had taken a stance in favour of court action in the interest of the legal security of this regulation that has required over thirty years of discussion. President Hans-Gert Pöttering, however, although he did recognise that this was the opinion held by a majority of the group (but not, for example, Karl von Wogau, he specified) welcomed the way in which President Cox settled the matter, mainly by speaking on the phone with José Maria Aznar in order to obtain assurance about the rights of Parliament. The Greens/EFA Group was also in favour of legal action, confirmed its co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The president of the Liberal Group, Graham Watson, also urged for the prerogatives of the European Parliament to be respected on codecision matters. Ana Palacio, elected member of Partido Popular (and currently Chair of the Committee on Freedoms, after chairing the legal committee until January), recognised that, with this decision, President Cox has accomplished a political act. By recommending that the legal base of the regulation should be challenged, the legal committee had asked for this action not to hold up implementation, she recalled. She also asked, not only that the European Council of Barcelona - where Pat Cox is to present the Parliament's position - should make commitments on this subject but also that the next IGC should clarify this question of legal base (Ed.: We recall that the Laeken Declaration refers to the need to examine Article 308 in the light of case law).