Brussels, 05/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - At the end of last week, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering met Abdelouahed Radi, Speaker of the House of Representatives (Moroccan parliament). The meeting focused on direct Euro-Moroccan relations and allowed discussion of the latest developments in the Sahara issue, in particular the plan, recently presented to the German presidency of the European Union, for broad autonomy for the region under Moroccan sovereignty, said a Moroccan source. Also discussed were prospects for EuroMed parliamentary cooperation. Mr Radi, who was the first president of the “parliamentary forum” which later became the EuroMed Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA) chairs a working group on the Middle East within this joint institution, and, in this role, brings his backing to the plan to call a special session on the Middle East, to be held probably in Cairo in June.
As an EMPA founder member and current president of the Mediterranean Assembly (MA), which brings together the speakers of the national parliaments of the European countries and of the southern and eastern Mediterranean coasts, Mr Radi was keen to take stock following the comments made at the meeting, in Brussels on the same day, of the EMPA committee on political affairs, to the effect that this latter institution had “greater legitimacy”. Such statements take us back to a sensitive issue in relations between European authorities and national parliaments. They take us back to the delicate negotiations, which so marked Josep Borrell's term of office as EMPA President, with speakers of European national parliaments which were building their own cooperation framework with the Mediterranean to rival the EP's. Frequent exchanges of letters and the start of a quickly extinguished controversy led to a compromise which Mr Radi believed was called into question by MEPs. “We have to work sensibly and complement one another, not through antagonism,” he said, stating that the MA owed “its legitimacy only to member national parliaments”.
Mr Radi also alluded to discussions currently taking place on the composition of joint parliamentary delegations (which, according to a letter received by the EMPA Bureau at its last meeting in Tunis, in which Mr Pöttering took part, should be formed so as not to create any stir: in short, should an Israeli be part of a delegation to an Arab country? - see EUROPE 9372 on this issue). According to his country's press agency, Mr Radi has confirmed Morocco's willingness to receive any delegation that wished to travel to the Kingdom within the framework of friendship and cooperation, so long as, in its composition, the delegation respected standards of balance and objectivity. In the face of first reactions, particularly from the Israeli side, the political affairs committee said that it was not suggesting any form of exclusion, but would like an addition to the rules of procedure to fill a gap. The working group on the regulation, chaired by British EPP-ED MEP Edward McMillan-Scott is scheduled to take up this proposal on 7 March. This case takes us back too to a purely European precedent, the cancellation of an EP ad hoc delegation to the Middle East for “technical reasons” (October 2006), because Marine Le Pen (Front National, France) was to be a member (see EUROPE 9295). (fb)