Parties reject call for ‘grand committee’ rejected

Date: 29/06/2000

By Gareth Harding

The idea of setting up a 'grand committee' of MEPs to handle much of the European Parlia-ment's routine business has been shot down in flames by the assembly's ruling body.

However, proposals to inject more life into plenary debates and reduce the institution's paper mountain of reports have met with broad approval.

The idea of creating a grand committee is the cornerstone of Parliament Vice-President James Provan's plans for improving the way the assembly carries out its legislative work. In his latest paper on internal reform, the UK Conservative MEP says "poor attendance in the chamber, a lack of animation in debate, gruellingly long voting sessions and uninspiring subject matter" hardly give the impression of a thriving political institution.

Provan believes reams of votes on technical amendments would be better dealt with by a Brussels-based super-committee of MEPs than by the full Parliament. The assembly's bureau, which is made up of the president and vice-president, agreed and asked Secretary-General Julian Priestley to draw up a paper on how such a body could work in practice.

However, the leaders of the Parliament's political groups have dismissed the idea. Although they agreed with Provan's analysis, almost all felt that the best solution would be to use existing rules more effectively rather than set up a rival body to the plenary.

The Socialist Group's institutional affairs spokesman Richard Corbett says many of the tools needed to streamline parliamentary business were approved in a report he co-authored last year. These include giving the presi-dent the power to take more block votes and scrapping the requirement to hold a plenary debate on every report.

Group leaders have now asked Provan to consider how the existing rules could be better applied and to suggest possible changes by September.

The idea of setting up a 'grand committee' of MEPs to handle much of the European Parliament's routine business has been shot down in flames by the assembly's ruling body. However, proposals to inject more life into plenary debates and reduce the institution's paper mountain of reports have met with broad approval.