Environment committee wins power battle in EP shake-up

By Simon Taylor

Date: 23/10/03

THE European Parliament's powerful environment committee has won a battle to retain most of its powers during the assembly's next five-year term.

It had been under threat of losing responsibility for food safety and consumer protection as part of moves to create new committees when the Parliament takes in additional MEPs from the new member states next summer.

But the heads of the Parliament's political groups, the Conference of Presidents, have decided to hand over only consumer protection to the internal market committee, leaving the environment body with key powers over food safety and public health.

In a separate move, as part of changes which will increase the number of committees from 17 to 20, the Parliament will have a new committee in charge of international trade policy and external economic relations, taking responsibilities from the current industry and trade and external affairs committees.

David Earnshaw, managing director at public affairs consultancy Burson-Marsteller and a former assistant to Ken Collins, long-time chair of the environment committee, said: "It's good that a relatively minimal change has resulted."

Earnshaw added the political group leaders were jealous of the powerful role the committee has won over the past two decades. Other experts commented that the move was sensible because of the committee's excessive workload. On food safety alone, it has had to process more than 90 pieces of legislation in a few years.

Other interest groups believe that the change could even boost the strength of the pro-consumer lobby within the internal market forum by altering the emphasis of its MEPs.

Willemien Bax, of Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs (BEUC), said: "We're not unhappy with this. Anything which ensures that the legal aspects of consumer issues are given more attention would be beneficial."

Commenting on the proposed new external economic relations and international trade committee, German Socialist MEP Erika Mann, a member of the present industry forum, welcomed the decision, saying that the reorganization was an "essential complement" to the additional powers over international trade policy the Parliament would gain if the draft constitution is approved.

"International trade is becoming more important and covering more areas of domestic policy. It's important for the Parliament to concentrate its work in one committee."

Part of the motivation for the reshuffle is to create extra bodies and provide chairmanships for the 106 new MEPs joining the Parliament from the ten acceding countries next year.

One of the other major changes is the creation of a single committee responsible for transport and tourism by splitting up the dossiers of the current regional policy and transport committee. The new legal affairs committee will take charge of MEPs' immunities and rules of procedure. Some see this as weakening the powers of this group which, for example, has played a major role in opposing the ban on tobacco advertising.

There will continue to be a separate petitions committee, despite attempts to merge this with legal affairs. The group responsible for culture will be renamed the knowledge society committee.

Despite the changes, experts are adamant that the new structure will not prevent turf fights over which committee handles a particular dossier. In this legislature, for example, the legal affairs and environment committee have taken opposing views over the environmental liability directive.

• Simon Taylor is former chief reporter at European Voice and former editor-in-chief of European Report. He has also recently carried out research for a report published by Burson-Marsteller on EU enlargement.