Brussels, 22/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - At its 20 March extraordinary session in Brussels, the European Parliament discussed with rather depleted ranks the broad outlines of the European Commission's political strategy for 2003 that had been presented to it on 27 February by President Prodi in Brussels (see EUROPE of 28 February, p.8). The Commission Vice-President Loyola de Palacio said that the Commission would work with the future Presidencies (Greek and Italian) to schedule work over the short-term, repeating that the Commission would need extra human resources to make a success of enlargement (she said an additional 500 temporary agents would be required at the very minimum). The Spanish Presidency is available to analyse the budget implications of the Commission's priorities in detail, assured the Spanish Secretary of State Ramon de Miguel.
During the debate at the end of the morning British Conservative James Elles was happy that such a debate had actually taken place so early in the budget process for the first time, which should make it possible to "better match" budget decisions with the legislative process. "A new wind is blowing", said British Liberal Democrat Diana Wallis, welcoming the fact that the new European Commission document wasn't simply a "shopping list" as often happened in the past. Austrian Social Democrat Hannes Swoboda said that 2003 would be a critical year for enlargement, but the EU would also prepare "views" on strengthening relations with other countries like Russia, which were not planning to join the EU. British Conservative Struan Stevenson welcomed the prospect of a radical reform of the CAP and wanted an equally far-reaching reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, based around the key word of "devolution". The Democratici di sinistra MEP Elena Paciotti raised the issue of justice in the area of freedom, security and justice, calling for Europol to be incorporated in the Community institutional framework, noting that the European Commission could make useful proposals to this effect to the Convention on the Future of Europe. CDU MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne stressed the implementation of a genuine single market, ironically commenting that he admired the Commission strategy document since officials had again managed to write so many pages about so little in concrete, but turning to Loyola de Palacio, he said that this didn't apply to dossiers she was responsible for.