Brussels, 10/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - At their mini-plenary session in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon, MEPs were not particularly enthusiastic about the draft amending treaty submitted to them, which member states' legal experts had managed to strike agreement upon on 3 October 2006. They treated it with a good dose of political realism, in fact. It is due to be approved by EU27 heads of state at the Lisbon Summit on 18-19 October. The vast majority of MEPs said the IGC's mandate adopted in June 2007 has generally been respected, but the European Parliament is not entirely happy with several issues which it will be attempting to have changed in the final run-up to the IGC.
One of the EP's concerns is the appointment of a future EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. Elmar Brok (EPP-ED, Germany) said it was out of the question that such a high representative would be appointed without the involvement of the European Parliament. Brok is one of the EP's three representatives on the IGC. The draft amending treaty stipulates that the European Council, deciding by a qualified majority vote (qmv) with the agreement of the President of the European Commission, shall appoint a High Representative who will also be Vice-President of the European Commission. Brok said the High Representative could not be appointed by the member states before the EP elects the President of the next European Commission, who will take up office in 2009 (this vote at the EP will be by qmv and the EP will be chosing between candidates put forward by the European Council, as is laid down in the new amending treaty). Brok said that the order of appointments had to be respected.
The British and Polish opt-outs from the Charter of Fundamental Rights are still seen as problematic by a large number of MEPs. The Portuguese Presidency should apply pressure over the next few days on the British and Poles to get them to agree to a clause whereby they give up on the opt-out (or have the option of opting-in in the future) in order to avoid extending the imbalances created by their opt-outs, said British MEPs Graham Watson (ALDE) and Andrew Duff (ALDE), who is another of the EP's representatives at the IGC).
The lack of European Parliament control over the transfer of personal information to countries outside the EU is a third area of huge concern to the MEPs. The new treaty Article 24 should be revised or laid out in greater detail in order to ensure that passenger information is not covered by Article 24, which foresees that the Council may decide alone on rules in this connection without the possibility of the EP intervening. Brok said information about citizens must not be transferred out of the EU without the EP's control. Francis Wurtz (GUE/NGL) said such a situation would be unacceptable and the EP should say that to the European Council.
Poland's request for the Ioannina compromise (which is at present a political statement) to be added to the new treaty has generally been rejected by the MEPs, explained the EP's third representative to the IGC, Enrique Baron Crespo (Spain, PES). Poland's request is unreasonable because it would turn a gentleman's agreement into primary law, explained Andrew Duff, calling for Ioannina to remain a Council statement. Jo Leinen, President of the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee, also warned that adding greater teeth to the Ioannina Declaration risked increasing the danger of vetoes on the Council, which he wanted to avoid.
The head of the EPP-ED group, Joseph Daul, welcomed the way the IGC's mandate had been respected and expressed satisfaction with the agreed text, but his colleague from the Socialist Group, Martin Schulz (Germany), made much more alarming statements, saying that the truly decisive phase would be the ratification procedure and everyone would have to fight to ensure the treaty was accepted by parliaments and citizens alike. He added that any new failure to ratify (following the failure to ratify the European Constitution) would mean the end of the European Union in its current form. Speaking on behalf of the Greens/EFA, Monica Frassoni regretted that the treaty was a lowest-common denominator compromise and an arrangement that had been made behind citizens' backs and was also an obscure document full of derogations that weakened the EU, particularly when it comes to the CFSP. She said that even if the EP was not going to reject the text, it would have to make it clear to citizens that the new treaty was less than the EP had wanted and it was the member states which had stolen the constitutional treaty.
Francis Wurtz (GUE/NGL) repeated his group's opposition that was not down to nationalism, he explained, but rather because none of the fundamental criticisms that had been made of the constitutional treaty had been taken into account. Jens-Peter Bonde (IND/DEM) complained about the lack of transparency, saying that the EP political groups had not had equal access to the IGC documents.
On behalf of the Portuguese Presidency, Portuguese European Affairs Minister Manuel Lobo Antunes said the Lisbon Summit would have to find a reasonable solution that was acceptable to all. He said the Portuguese Presidency didn't want to leave anyone out. (hb)