Brussels, 13/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - The German Hans-Gert Pöttering was re-elected to the head of the EPP-ED group (European People's Party-European Democrats) of the European Parliament on Tuesday by 229 votes to 10. Announcing his re-election "with 96% of the vote" to the press himself, he expressed his "gratitude" to the members of his group. Mr Pöttering also indicated that the EPP-ED group would have 268 MEPs for this legislative period (definitive figures), 228 EPP and 40 ED, or "a huge majority for the EPP". He added: "there could have been even more if we had agreed to all the requests to join us, but in some cases this was not possible". The re-elected President then spoke of his group's main priorities, particularly stressing his hopes of reaching an "agreement of understanding" with the party of European Socialists (PES), which would give the Parliament "great stability".
More generally, Hans-Gert Pöttering reiterated his group's respect for the States, small and large, underlining that one of their main priorities for this term would be to "concretise the implementation of the Constitution". On the agreement with the Socialists, which was described several times as a "technical" agreement, he said that this did not spell the end of left/right confrontation within the hemicycle. In the short term, the "agreement of understanding" with the PES would allow the two groups to share the Presidency of the Parliament between them. Mr Pöttering explained that the top job should in principle go to a Socialist for the first half of the period (two and a half years), and an EPP-ED for the second half. Another function of the short-term agreement is that, according to Mr Pöttering, this would provide broad support for the European Council's candidate for the Presidency of the European Commission, José Manuel Durao Barroso (who will be heard tomorrow by the EPP-ED). On this point, the President of the EPP-ED group said that "'the result of the elections should be reflected at the level of Commission President". Commenting on a topical issue, Mr Pöttering welcomes the Court of Justice ruling upholding the Commission's stance in the Stability Pact affair, "because it [the ruling] respects the law, and law, not opportunism, is the fundament of the EU". Lastly, when asked about the potential negative impact of the presence of Eurosceptics in his group, Mr Pöttering pointed out that the British ones were already in it in the previous legislative period. On the nine Czech ODS members, he said that they had committed to defend the group position on the Constitution, and to do all in their power to avoid damaging its coherence.