Centre-right split over call to ban former communists from top jobs

Date: 05/02/04

MEMBERS of the EU's most powerful political force are divided over an effort to prevent former communists from taking positions in the Union's key bodies.

Centre-right politicians from central and eastern Europe have backed a call for all political groups in the European Parliament to bar anyone with a communist past.

A resolution backing the plea is likely to be put to a vote at the congress of the European People's Party (EPP) in Brussels today (5 February). However, it appeared last night that the resolution would have to be watered down before it can be adopted. Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former Belgian premier who was also a vice-chairman of the Convention on the future of Europe, rejected the call. "It's not democratic," he told European Voice. "If people are elected, they are elected."

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal, has echoed that. "It is up to the voters to decide," he said yesterday.

Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, an Austrian Christian Democrat, concurred: "If somebody is elected in Parliamentary elections, we have to accept the results of a democratic procedure. The Copenhagen criteria state that the first thing a candidate country has to have to open negotiations [on joining the EU] is a functioning democracy. It would be a reverse action now if we, on our side, do not respect the rules."

The resolution was the brainchild of Jozsef Szajer, an observer at the European Parliament from Hungarian party Fidesz.

It has sparked a furious response from the left in Budapest, as the ruling Socialist party has several ex-communists in senior ranks. Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy has even confessed he was a secret agent during the communist epoch.

Former Hungarian prime minister Gyula Horn has said the resolution is hypocritical, as Spain's Popular Party, which belongs to the EPP, stems from the fascist movement of late dictator Francisco Franco.

Gyula Hegyi, Hungarian observer in Parliament's Socialist group, said: "The West has a past, too. We said nothing against the fact that former members of Franco's far-right party in Spain acceded to the EPP. On the contrary, I am pleased that they democratized," he added.

The resolution is also considered part of a strategy to have Parliament veto the appointment of European commissioners who once had prominent roles in the communist regimes. Such figures would include Estonia's nominee to the EU executive, Siim Kallas, as the former premier was a member of the Soviet Communist Party in 1972-90.

Hans-Gert Pöttering, head of the EPP-ED group in the Parliament, declined to name which ex-communist figures were being targeted. "We have to look at individuals and see if there was any conversion on the road to Damascus on the part of ex-communist leaders."

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel, leader of Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU), said she did not agree with calls by Edmund Stoiber, head of the CDU's Bavarian sister party the CSU, that Turkey's EU accession bid should be the main issue in June's European election.

Instead she said her party would be concentrating on the Lisbon agenda of turning the EU into the world's most competitive economy by 2010. She also attacked Gerhard Schröder's government for breaching the budgetary rules set by the Stability and Growth Pact: "Germany is one of the inventors of the stability pact. Unfortunately, it's an historical fact that Germany is one of those violating the stability pact today."

Merkel called for a compromise to be brokered so that the current impasse on the draft EU constitution would be cleared. This could involve applying the voting weights for member states foreseen in the Nice Treaty in 2005-09 and then those laid out in the draft constitution for a trial period of five years.

"I think we should use our imagination," she added. "If we don't get a constitution under the Irish presidency, then I'm sure we will during the Dutch presidency."

Centre-right politicians from central and eastern Europe are supporting a call for all political groups in the European Parliament to bar anyone with a communist past from taking positions in the European Union's key bodies.

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