Strasbourg, 20/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - Opening the constitutive session of the sixth parliament elected at universal suffrage, since June 1979, the Uniti nell'Ulivo, Giovanni Berlinguer, the senior member of the new parliament, asserted on Tuesday, that the "universal vote" expressed by citizens during the European elections last June, despite its limitations had allowed for the first time the realisation of a union of peoples and governments based on democracy and legality and not on the domination of one country on the others, which had often been the case on "our continent". Giovanni Berlinguer (from the family of the great PCI leader Enrico Berlinguer), noted that at the moment when Europe was expanding its borders, the European Parliament would see its own role expand, notably thanks to the European constitution. Warmly applauded, Berlinguer welcomed his colleagues from the ten new Member States, observing that this Europe had been born like the Community of Coal, Steel and Nuclear Energy (ECSC and Euratom), which was first a common market, which then had its own currency and finally became "the Europe of work, solidarity, social justice, welcome and integration…the people's Europe, open to the world, to the suffering and aspirations of other people". Giovanni Berlinguer is 80 and was born on 9 July 1924.
Berlinguer announces formation of seven political groups - 34 non-attached
The president of the session also officially announced the formation of seven political groups: EPP-ED, 268 members, PES, 200 members, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, 88 members, Greens/EFA, 42 members, GUE/NGL, 41 members, Independence and Democracy, 32 members, UEN, 27 members. 34 MEPs will take their seats on the benches of the non-attached. (Monday evening, an unsuccessful attempt was made during a heated meeting to constitute the rightwing group, with MEPs from the French National Front, the Lista Mussolini, the Movimento sociale Fiamma Tricolore but also the Lega Nord, the Belgian Vlaams Blok and the Austrian and Polish far right.