‘Pour encourager les autres’

Date: 06/02/1997

GETTING people to sit up and listen to its views has always been the European Parliament's biggest challenge.

So often dismissed in the past as little more than a talking shop, its task in recent years has been to convince both its sister EU institutions and the wider public that it is capable of exercising the new powers given to it by the Maastricht Treaty responsibly and effectively.

Only then, both its supporters and critics argued, would MEPs gain the influence they sought, not only in those areas where their role has been enhanced, but also in others where they still have little formal say.

Over the past few weeks, the Parliament has made huge strides towards achieving both those goals with the publication of two authoritative and hard-hitting draft reports on key issues facing the Union today.

Those reports are the products of the work of the Parliament's first-ever committees of inquiry, embryonic European versions of the US Senate hearings which have long played such a crucial role in American politics.

The two committees chose very different topics for their investigations: while the first to complete its work opted for the highly-controversial and politically sensitive subject of the Union's handling of the BSE crisis, the second chose to focus on the EU's transit system, a little-publicised area of Union activity but one which is crucial to the smooth running of the single market.

After months of hearings and fact-finding missions by committee members, both have produced draft reports which have been praised for their thoroughness and well-argued conclusions.

Both have also come up with a string of recommendations which have attracted widespread support within EU circles and beyond.

The speed with which European Commission President Jacques Santer responded to the draft report on the BSE affair by promising a shake-up within the Commission to improve its ability to tackle food health scares - and his promise to come back with a fuller answer before the full Parliament votes on the report later this month - are testimony to the institution's growing influence.

Cynics may argue that Santer's swift response had little to do with the rights or wrongs of the committee's conclusions, and much more to do with the threat of a censure vote if he fails to convince MEPs that their concerns have been addressed.

But Santer himself has acknowledged that mistakes were made and lessons have been learnt. It is doubtful whether the Commission would have conceded as much without the Parliament's 'encouragement'.

The committee of inquiry into transit fraud has similarly exposed significant flaws in the system which are estimated to have cost Union taxpayers at least 1 billion ecu over the last seven years. It, too, will make a series of recommendations to improve existing procedures and close loopholes.

Despite the inquisitorial approach adopted by the committee, its findings are so well-documented and backed by evidence that few within the industry have challenged the conclusions contained in its draft report.

All this has done much to enhance the Parliament's reputation as a responsible body which can play a useful role in highlighting deficiencies in the EU's internal procedures - and a constructive one in suggesting ways in which they can be remedied.