Row delays work on EU rights charter

Date: 16/09/1999

By Simon Coss

MOVES to draw up an EU charter of fundamental citizens' rights are being hamstrung by disagreements over who should sit on the influential committee which will draft the document.

Union leaders decided at their June summit in Cologne that EU citizens' rights should be "consolidated into a charter and thereby made more evident".

This document, they said, should be drafted by a special body made up of representatives from governments, national parliaments and the European Parliament, and should also include observers from the European Court of Justice.

They did not stipulate, however, how many representatives each of these organisations should provide and it is this which is now causing diplomatic headaches in Brussels.

MEPs have made it clear that they want at least the same number of representatives on the committee as EU governments - in other words, 15. But some member states have expressed concern that this would make the new body too unwieldy and could prevent it from producing a final draft of the convention by the December 2000 deadline set in Cologne.

The Finnish EU presidency has proposed a compromise which would allow eight MEPs to participate in the talks, but officials concede they may have to revise this figure if the Parliament sticks to its guns.

It has already been agreed that two representatives from each of the Union's national parliaments will sit on the committee.

Other decisions about the way the committee will operate have yet to be taken, including who will chair the influential panel. Three solutions are currently on the table: rotating the chairmanship among holders of the EU presidency, allowing the committee to pick its own head, and getting Union leaders to elect someone at their special summit in Tampere next month.