Vienna/Brussels, 17/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - On a visit to Vienna where he met Chancellor Schussel, European Parliament President Pat Cox sent out an appeal for a period of calm reflection on the Beres decrees. The EP will be carrying out a legal study on the subject, he recalled, declaring: "Our duty is to make history, not to repeat it".Speaking before the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee, Commissioner Verheugen said that: - the decrees will not develop "new" legal effects regarding citizenship and ownership: additional verifications are required regarding criminal law and, if they still have effect, "they will have to be repealed". Verheugen acknowledged that the decrees raised a moral and political problem, and most MEPs called for them to be repealed in an official text, but with caution, and possibly creating a committee of historians to examine the none legal aspects, as proposed by Ursula Stenzl, OVP member (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.18 and 12 April, p.6, for the Zeman/Verheugen declaration). Verheugen noted the importance that Jurgen Schroeder (CDU) gave to this affair in his report on accession negotiations with Prague, and hoped that "this wound" would be healed before enlargement, while ensuring "not to fuel the electoral campaign in the Czech Republic".
The Party of European Socialists, on the other hand, speaking through Jan Marinus Wiersma and Simon Murphy, welcomed the Zeman-Verheugen declaration by which the decrees must have no impact on accession negotiations, and said that "the enlargement of the EU is a forward-looking process that should not be hampered by reviving past battles".