Brussels, 03/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - The Chairs of the European Parliament's committees on foreign affairs, the budget and budgetary control wrote to Pat Cox on Wednesday asking him to agree to the creation of a working group on the control of financial aid paid to the Palestinian Authority by the European Commission (see EUROPE of 25 January 2003, p.13 for the arguments Messrs. Laschet and Ferber put forward for such a solution). The Conference of Presidents of the EP should be examining this request in Strasbourg on 14 February. At the same time, some 170 MEPs have signed a request (that will be forwarded to Mr. Cox on Tuesday) calling for the setting up of a committee of enquiry to "determine whether or not there has been misappropriation and violation of Community law" in the use of this aid (see EUROPE of 1 February, p.13).
The chairs of the committees concerned, Elmar Brok (CDU), Terry Wynn (British Labour) and Dietmut Theato (CDU) consider in their letter that such a working group, which would be composed of a small number of members of these three committees, would enable them to continue, intensify and better co-ordinate the work that started last year to more effectively check how European aid is being used. In 2002, the direct budgetary assistance to the Palestinians was subject to a transfer requested by the Commission and intensively discussed in the committees concerned. The authors recall that the payment of credits was approved "on condition that budgetary support to the Palestinian Authority under this heading was accompanied by complete and continuous information of the European Parliament and accompanied by enhanced monitoring measures".