Presidents rise to the occasion

Date: 27/02/1997

A unique meeting took place in Strasbourg last week - a rogue's gallery of all European Parliament presidents since the first direct elections in 1979. The gathering was held partly to celebrate the 90th birthday of former Strasbourg Mayor Pierre Pflimlin, the man who did so much to improve the city's facilities for MEPs and maintain Strasbourg as the seat of the Parliament.

But the ex-presidents (Simone Veil, Pflimlin, Piet Dankert, Lord Plumb, Enrique Barón, Egon Klepsch and Klaus Hänsch) were also brought together at the initiative of the current incumbent, José María Gil-Robles, to sign a joint appeal to EU governments to get on with the Intergovernmental Conference to further unify Europe and to defend the values of “human dignity, democracy and solidarity”.