European People’s Party deal opens door to sceptics

By David Cronin

Date: 01/04/04

THE UK's Conservative Party and others wary of EU integration were effectively offered a place in the European Parliament's biggest political group after the June elections, due to a vote in Strasbourg yesterday (31 March).

A majority of MEPs with the 232-strong European People's Party accepted a deal signed by the group's leader Hans-Gert Pöttering and Michael Howard, head of the British Conservatives. It changed the EPP-ED's status, giving to parties that wish to join the group "the right to promote and develop their distinct views on constitutional and institutional issues in relation to the future of Europe".

In practice, this would mean that parties which do not subscribe to the generally pro-EU line advocated by the EPP mainstream could join its European Democrats (ED) wing, where the 36 Tory MEPs currently sit.

Controversially, it could enable the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS) to join the group - expected to remain the assembly's largest after the June poll. Members of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, part of the EPP, are openly hostile to that party as it defends the Benes decrees, the post-war edicts under which Sudeten Germans were expelled from the former Czechoslovakia.

Insiders say the ODS is eyeing a vice-presidency position in the group, something which would be reserved for the ED wing under another measure approved yesterday. Jan Zahradil, its top candidate in the June election, would be the most likely contender for that position.

In a statement following the vote, Pöttering said the changes agreed meant the EPP is now "prepared for EU enlargement and the challenges we will face after the European elections in June".

Yet there was some acrimony in the group due to the deal, endorsed by 170 votes to ten, with 15 abstentions.

Four of the ten deputies who opposed the move signed a letter of protest.

Guido Bodrato (Italy), Jean-Louis Bourlanges (France), Gérard Deprez (Belgium) and Concepció Ferrer (Spain) said it was "contrary to all principles of democratic transparency" that deputies were asked to support the accord with Howard, without having a preliminary debate and when many were unaware of its contents.

No information had been furnished to deputies, the four said, on how much of the finances the group as a whole can draw for its political activities will be allocated to the Tories.

Bourlanges belongs to the Union for French Democracy (UDF), whose party leader François Bayrou has held exploratory talks about forming a federalist-minded group in the next assembly with Graham Watson, current head of Liberal MEPs, and Romano Prodi, the European Commission president and leader of Italy's Margarita coalition.

The accord was condemned too by the EPP's Socialist rivals. Socialist group leader Enrique Barón Crespo said the EPP would now be a technical alliance, rather than one based on a shared philosophy. He also highlighted the irony that the British Conservatives will be receiving funding in euros, "a currency which they ferociously oppose".

A change in the status of the European People's Party means that parties which do not necessarily subscribe to the generally pro-EU line advocated by the EPP could join its European Democrats wing.