Legal ‘oversight’ clouds MEP’s status

Date: 06/02/1997

By Rory Watson

FLAMBOYANT French businessman and Radical MEP Bernard Tapie is in the limelight again as France and the European Parliament cross swords over the termination of his parliamentary mandate.

MEPs will consider later this month how to comply with the French government's decision to strip the former minister of his status as a Euro MP following the collapse of his business empire and subsequent bankruptcy.

The case is unprecedented and has highlighted a serious oversight in the 20-year-old legislation which sets out the rules applying to directly-elected members of the European Parliament.

This envisaged a number of possible scenarios - such as the death or resignation of an MEP and the problem of incompatible mandates - and laid down courses of action. It also set out procedures for handling the many requests for the lifting of MEPs' parliamentary immunity so that they could stand trial for various offences in a member state.

But it did not envisage a situation where a member state would decide to terminate an elected member's term of office as an MEP and then insist that this be implemented by the Parliament.

Some suspect the oversight was not accidental. “Given that the concept of termination already existed in France and French lawyers worked on the 1976 act on the election of MEPs, it seems strange that this was not taken into account in the legislation,” said one parliamentary source.

Privately, MEPs acknowledge that they have little option but to comply with the French government's demand. But they are determined to highlight the anomalies the incident has raised and to point to ways of avoiding a similar legal vacuum in future.

“In practical terms, the Parliament cannot ignore the French decision, but we could indicate to the French government that we understand their position and that they should bear in mind some other factors,” suggested one parliamentary source.

Italian Radical MEP Gianfranco Dell'Alba warned that the episode could set a serious precedent for the future if France's view that its national law unequivocally took precedence was accepted without comment.

“Given the legal void, the Parliament should not just acquiesce and submit totally to France's request. What would happen if a highly authoritarian government was elected in a member state and it argued that its national law allowed it to revoke a member's mandate?” he asked this week.

Dell'Alba has also pointed out to his colleagues on the Parliament's rules committee, which is handling the affair, that inequalities exist in the treatment of French national deputies and their colleagues elected on a European ticket.

In France, the independent constitutional court examines any move to terminate a deputy's parliamentary mandate to ensure it has not been prompted by an arbitrary decision.

But these judicial guarantees are not available to a French MEP, who instead comes under a mere administrative decree.

“It is incredible that the French executive could decide that Tapie is no longer eligible to be an MEP and that the European Parliament is not able to say anything about that,” said Dell'Alba.

The rules committee was first asked to give its opinion on Tapie's parliamentary future last November, but decided to suspend any decision while the French Radical member was continuing his lengthy appeals against the bankruptcy rulings made against him through the French courts.

Early last month, the French council of state rejected Tapie's attempt to overturn the Matignon decree issued last October terminating his Euro-mandate, and the European Parliament's new President José María Gil-Robles asked the rules committee to prepare its opinion. This week it decided that Tapie should benefit from parliamentary immunity until the full Parliament declares his seat vacant on 17 February.

“The date this vacancy arises should coincide with the date the European Parliament takes note of it,” said a letter from the committee to Gil-Robles.