Convention Members oppose creation of Third Chamber

Brussels, 11/07/2002 (Agence Europe) - Seven parliamentary Members of the Convention signed a joint contribution against the creation of a subsidiarity chamber composed of representatives of national parliaments. Signatories are five MEPs (Andrew Duff, British Liberal; Alain Lamassoure, EPP France; Pervenche Berès and Olivier Duhamel, French Socialists; and Silvia Kaufmann, GUE/NGL Germany), a Belgian deputy, Flemish Liberal Karel De Gucht and a Czech Senator, Josef Zieleniec. This comes as a response to the contribution presented one month ago by five government representatives: Pierre Moscovici from France, Peter Glotz from Germany, Ray MacSharry from Ireland, Peter Hain from the UK, and Danuta Hübner from Poland. The latter proposed the creation of a new body formed of national parliament representatives or members appointed by the Council for monitoring respect of the principle of subsidiarity. The seven signatories of the counter-proposal consider the creation of a third chamber of this kind alongside the Council and European Parliament would make the "political system even more slow, opaque and confusing than it is now". The proposal is, they say, an insult to the European Parliament as it would encroach upon its prerogatives. It would be impracticable to gather national MPs, suffering 25 or so different mandates, timetables and workloads. They also consider the representative capability of the national MPs in their new forum would be highly "suspect", with the risk of manipulation on the part of their governments.

The seven Convention Members consider the best way for national MPs to control what happens at European level would be to open the legislative work of the Council up to the public. They propose increasing the Court of Justice's role of control. Regarding Article 308 of the Treaty, which allows the Community to "take appropriate measures" to reach the aims set by the Treaties, the seven Convention Members call on the European Parliament to be associated in power strengthening and for the national parliaments to be consulted.