Strasbourg, 26/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - During a press conference on the fringe of the European Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg, a group of MEPs fiercely opposed to human embryonic stem cell research challenged the legitimacy of the Chair of the Committee on Industry, Carlos Westendorp. They also challenged the legitimacy of the rapporteur on the first specific programme, Wim Van Velzen, and that of the rapporteur for the framework programme, Gérard Caudron, who recently negotiated with the Danish Presidency and Commissioner Busquin during several informal tripartite dialogues so that the Parliament would not be kept out of the process for developing ethical rules for this kind of research. German Green member Hitrud Breyer, Irish EPP member Dana Scallon, French Elisabeth Montfort (NA), Italian Mario Mauro (Forza Italia) and Portuguese Conservative José Ribeiro took a stance in favour of the moratorium foreseen in the Danish Presidency compromise (see above). They reproached Parliament negotiators for having sought, without the slightest mandate, to bring it into question. They felt that these informal trialogues served no purpose since the framework programme was already adopted and the Parliament does not have any power of codecision on specific programmes. While acknowledging the fact that both procedures were closely linked since the Council had pledged, during adoption of the framework programme, to take certain amendments on board in specific programmes, Mrs Breyer was highly critical of the secret nature of these consultations held "behind closed doors", conducted by a delegation that had formed itself and given itself a mandate and whose aim, she says, was to destroy the compromise in order to finance embryonic research with Community funding. Ms Montfort felt this one year moratorium should be used to advantage to finance research into adult stem cells and obtain sufficient results to show that the use of embryonic cells is not necessary. Mr Ribeiro affirmed that the principle whereby Community funding can only be used for research which is legal in all Member States should always be applied. On the subject of the European Parliament's participation in the debate on ethics, he noted that the history of the Fiori Report (Ed.: which had been rejected) gives a good example of the state of progress of the debate in Parliament. Mr Ribeiro also reproached Commissioner Busquin for not having the slightest respect for the debate on ethics or for national legislation in this field.