Strasbourg, 25/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a meeting on the fringe of the plenary session in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the members of the European Parliamentary delegation to the European Convention were not gentle with their chairman Inigo Mendez de Vigo and the report drafted by his working group on subsidiarity (see EUROPE of 21 September, p.3).
German Social-Democrat Klaus Haensch, Vice-President of the EP delegation to the Convention, considered that the early warning system for national parliaments would rather complicate the legislative procedure whereas the Convention has precisely to seek to simplify the decision-making process. He spoke of a political weapon being handed to national parliaments and considered that it could place back into question the monopoly of initiative of the European Commission which would find it very hard to persist in its legislative intentions if the national parliaments of the large Member states issued reservations. Just as President Giscard d'Estaing remarked at the Convention's plenary session, Mr. Haensch considered that the granting of the legal right of appeal only to parliaments having issued reasoned opinions would lead these parliaments to automatically issue such opinions, to preserve their right of appeal. "This proposal worsens the problem rather than resolving it", said Austrian Green Johannes Voggenhuber, stressing, as did Spanish Socialist Carlos Carnero, that governments may very well use their parliaments to block, in the name of subsidiarity, a proposal of which in fact they do not agree with the content. This system, said Christiana Muscardini (Aleanza Nazionale) will endanger the European Commission, as in future it risks not only being in conflict with the EP or Council but also with national institutions. She deplored this confusion of the levels of power that will "confuse European democracy". While sharing the concerns of Mr. Haensch, Danish Liberal Lone Dybkjaer deplored the fact that the principle of proportionality should have been forgotten. Dutch Christian-Democrat, Johanna Maij-Weggen considered that, even if we have avoided a new chamber, the mechanism being proposed would amount to the same thing.
German Christian-Democrat Elmar Brok considers, on the contrary, that this mechanism is a good compromise that should not block European activity. An opinion shared by the member of the Scottish National Party, Neil McCormick, who welcomed the fact that there would thus be more debate on European issues in national parliaments. For Portuguese Socialist, Luis Marinho, the mechanism being proposed is the only possible one in current circumstances.
Defending the report of the working group he chairs, Mr. Mendez de Vigo (Spanish, EPP-ED) reaffirmed that the Commission's monopoly of initiative was intact and repeated that the risks of abuse were limited due to the fact that the opinions of national parliaments would have to be duly reasoned. One cannot both claim to want greater participation by national parliaments and then say that that's dangerous, he added.
The same meeting allowed them to turn to the work of the other groups. British Conservative Timothy Kirkthorpe said that in the one devoted to complementary powers, requests were made to grant more powers to the Union in the field of research and in the field of employment. Mr. Voggenhuber said that there was a draft final report on the Union's legal status: but for one vote, there is a consensus on conferring a single status on the Union and the Community, but opinions differ as to the consequences that could have for the high Representative of CFSP, he stipulated. Regarding economic governance, Mr. Haensch announced that the major goals of the Union would be reformulated and if possible strengthened in the future constitutional treaty, but he observed that the requests aimed at enhancing ambitions regarding employment and the social market economy remained minority. The working group on the co-ordination of economic policy, which he chairs, considers that Economic policy must remain in within the realm of Member states and a majority consider that the independence and mandate of the European Central Bank must remain unchanged. Few members of the group would like to insert the open co-ordination method in the future Constitution. Nor is there a consensus on the questions of tax harmonisation, the external representation of the euro, of the status of the Eurogroup.