Brussels, 05/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - In the draft report he has just submitted, the former President of the European Parliament, Jose Maria Gil Robles (EPP-ED, Spain) suggests that the Constitutional Committee recommends to the EP plenary that it endorses the compromise position put forward by the Presidency of the Council on 22 February on the electoral procedure for the election of MEPs. Mr Gil Robles sees the Spanish Presidency's compromise, based on the report by the Greek Christian Democrat former Vice-President Giorgios Anastassopoulos adopted during the previous term of office of the European Parliament on 15 July 1998, as "reasonable". At the time, Parliament came out in favour of introducing constituencies in all Member States and from 2009 onwards, allocating 10% of seats to a list covering a constituency that covers all Member States. It also wanted Member States to authorise the voting of a preferential list. The Presidency's compromise does not diverge very much from the EP's text. It stipulates that Member States can (rather than must) divide themselves into constituencies and, in terms of a European list, it proposes a new review before 2009. This takes account of various problems concerning the implementation of the European list against the backdrop of enlargement and the Nice Treaty's upper limit on the number of seats; and how to divide up big Member States that are divided into many regions into constituencies.
According to the rapporteur, most of the members of the EP's Constitutional Committee would favour endorsement. At an initial exchange of views, Luxembourg Socialist Jacques Poos opposed the introduction of a European electoral list along the lines of that proposed by the previous Parliament, since it risked weakening the representation of small countries. French Green Gérard Onesta opposed the fact that it would be compulsory for countries with more than 20 million inhabitants to divide themselves into constituencies because this would favour large political parties and work to the disadvantage of the others. Belgian Socialist Jean-Maurice Dehousse, however, is calling for the Council's compromise to be rejected.
The procedure set out in Article 190 of the Treaty applies here. The ball is back in the European Parliament's court, which will now adopt a draft legal act for transmission to the Council, which publishes an amended proposal, adopting it by unanimous voting once it has been approved by the European Parliament.