Brussels, 18/06/2009 (Agence Europe) - The United European Left/Nordic Green Left group will have 35 MEPs in total from 13 EU member states. One MEP has yet to announce whether or not they will be joining the group, taking it to 36 members, compared with 41 in the previous European Parliament. With eight MEPs, the German delegation is the biggest, and the future chair of the group will probably be German. There are also 5 French MEPs, 5 Portuguese, 4 Czech, 3 Greek, 2 Cypriot and 2 Dutch MEPs. The first meeting to set up the group will be held on Wednesday 24 June 2009.
Left MEPs held a meeting to get to know one another in Brussels on 16-17 June 2009, where Communist MEP from La Réunion, Elie Hoarau, elected on the French Alliance des Outre-mers list, hailed the work of chair Francis Wurtz, thanking him for being a staunch defender of overseas territories and people living in them. A press release explains that he also hailed the work of Paul Verges, elected in 2004, and exiting MEP on the Alliance des Outre-mers list, Madeleine de Grandmaison. After briefing the new members of the group on the unusual character of his constituency (covering 3 oceans and 11 territories), Elie Hoarau stressed the fragile nature of the economy and the permanent structural handicaps of ultra-peripheral regions of the EU. He explained the challenges such territories will face during the new European Parliament (the future of the local tax on imported goods), keeping the Structural Funds, the entry into force of economic partnership agreements, the financial crisis, climate crisis and food crisis) and called for greater solidarity from his group on such issues. (O.J./transl.fl)