Brussels, 24/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday in an address to the press, CDU MEP, Elmar Brok, welcomed the "half coup d'Etat" of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, with his institutional proposal finally being ruled out thanks to the corrections brought by the presidium (EUROPE yesterday p 7). But even this improved document is not to his satisfaction. He stressed that for the EPP group at the Convention, a president of the European Council, who is addressed as "president" or chairman" "is not acceptable". "All the pressure is exercised by the small countries while no compromise is demanded from the large nations, he believed. He also feared the consequences of ratification in countries like Ireland and Denmark if they were told that they would not have a Commissioner for ten years.
Mr Brok also posed the problem of the calendar, explaining that a Convention formed by a majority of MEPs should not fall into the trap of the Council that wanted it to finish work on 20 June so that it did not come up with any "options and that the government could do what it wanted". Mr Brok said that if a few more weeks were needed, they should take them, noting that some things in the first part of the treaty depended on the second part, defined "technical" by the Convention secretariat, but which focused on "questions of power", as the definition of competencies and exceptions to codecision.