Madrid, 08/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the joint Spanish Congress/Senate committee for the European Union elected the two Spanish parliament representatives to the Convention on the future of Europe, viz. Gabriel Cisneros (Partido Popular) with Senator Alejandro Munoz Alonso as alternate, and Socialist José Borrell (President of the joint committee and former minister) with Diego Lopez Garrido as his alternate (see page 16 for the Committee of the Regions' members of the Convention).
British Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope (one of the European Parliament's EPP-ED group's representatives on the Convention) has indicated in a press release that he would soon be launching a consultation process in his constituency and elsewhere in the UK in order to reflect British citizens' ideas on the debate on the future of Europe, adding that he wanted people not to get trapped at such an early stage in the straitjacket of a boring debate restricted to specific themes but rather to have a huge agenda, looking forwards rather than backwards.