Verbatim report of proceedings

Monday, 12 May 1997 - Strasbourg

3. Order of business

  President . ‐The next item is the order of business.

The final version of the draft agenda as drawn up by the Conference of Presidents, pursuant to Rule 95 of the Rules of Procedure has been distributed.

The following amendments have been proposed:

Sittings of 12 to 16 May 1997 at Strasbourg

Monday:

  President . – The EPP Group is asking for referral to committee of the report by Brendan Donnelly – on behalf of the Committee on the Rules of Procedure – on amendment of Rule 116 of the Rules of Procedure concerning split voting (A4‐0089/97).

I give Mrs Oomen‐Ruijten the floor to move the request for referral back to committee of this report.

  Oomen‐Ruijten (PPE). – (NL) Mr President, the EPP Group is totally in favour of amending the Rules of Procedure to make voting time shorted by no longer holding split votes. We fully endorse that objective. But the overwhelming majority of our group believes that if we approve this report it will mean a huge increase in the number of amendments so that in fact we do not achieve our objective. This is why we are asking the House, through you, to refer Mr Donnelly"s report back to the Committee on the Rules of Procedure for reconsideration and to see if abandoning split votes will enable us to cope with the large number of amendments which we expect to be seeing.

  Fayot (PSE), Chairman of the Committee on the Rules of Procedure. – (FR) Mr President, I have taken note of the request by the EPP Group to refer the Donnelly report back to the committee. As far as I know the Socialist Group is not against that referral, but i should like to ask the EPP something: could we not hold the debate and then send it to committee before the vote? That would give our Assembly the opportunity to give its guidelines and opinions. The donnelly report has not been amended by our colleagues. I therefore propose holding the debate and then, if our colleagues agree, refer it back to committee prior to voting.

  Oomen‐Ruijten (PPE). – (NL) Mr President, I think we are happy to agree to the suggestion of the chairman of the Rules of Procedure Committee and so withdraw our request, but we should agree to refer the report back before the vote to take another look at its implications.

  President . – I remind the EPP Group that it will have to make its request again, after the debate, for agreement.

Tuesday:

  President . – The EPP Group is requesting that the Mosiek‐Urbain report – on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Citizens' Rights – on the supplementary supervision of insurance undertakings in an insurance group (A4‐0157/97) be referred back to committee.

I give Mrs Mosiek‐Urban the floor to move the request.

  Mosiek‐Urbahn (PPE), rapporteur. – (DE) Mr President, may I once again emphasize the importance of this request by my Group. When it was voted on in the Legal Affairs Committee there was consensus on many individual points. But in the final vote it failed to achieve a majority. This report deals with a very complicated technical subject. The absence of any amendments to this report indicates the large measure of agreement amongst various political groupings that the best and most appropriate course of action is to refer it back. I thus urge the House to approve that request.

(Parliament approved the request for referral)

Wednesday:

  President . – The Green Group has requested the withdrawal of the Titley report – on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defence Policy – on the challenges facing the European defence‐related industries: a contribution for action at European level (A4‐0076/97).

Mr Telkämper has the floor to move the request.

  Telkämper (V). – (DE) I believe we should debate this Titley report briefly today. First of all I must compliment Mr Titley and the British Labour Party on their election victory. My warmest congratulations on that. But Mr Titley is trying to rush things with this report of his. It represents a qualitative change in EU foreign policy. We have not been able to discuss this change sufficiently in the groups, at least not in certain groups, and in particular there has not been enough discussion in committee.

The committee vote was 31 to 30, though a colleague told me he did not know what he was voting for or, with the wisdom of hindsight, he would have voted differently. The question, in view of 240 proposed amendments, is whether we ought to vote now at all? This report is not entirely complete, and positions on its are not yet clear. If my information is correct, the Socialist Group will not be discussing the amendments until tomorrow evening. In our Group, as in the committee, we have not yet reached agreement.

The common foreign and security policy is on the agenda for Maastricht. Mr Henderson as the British representative is now saying things quite different from what the British representative said a month ago. We should postpone this report for a month or two until we have the results of Maastricht II and Parliament has formed an opinion on these matters which is soundly based and has been thoroughly debated. This is why we put down this request.

(Applause)

  President . ‐ I give Mr Titley the floor to reply to Mr Telkämper.

  Titley (PSE). – Mr President, I am not sure which report Mr Telkämper is speaking about. There are only 36 amendments to my report, and most of them have been tabled by the Green Group in any case.

Secondly, my report does not deal with the foreign and security policy architecture – that is left to Mr Tindemans' report, which we are discussing.

Thirdly, this was going to be on the agenda in April but was put back to May in order to allow the groups to set out their positions. So all the matters which Mr Telkämper has spoken about have already been dealt with. We have delayed it in order to get this description. There are not many amendments and I can see no reason at all for delaying any further this report.

(Parliament rejected the request for withdrawal)

  President . – The Green group has requested the addition to the agenda of Council and Commission statements on progress in the work of the IGC.

May I remind the House that the Council requested that these statements not be kept on the agenda and the Conference of Presidents agreed unanimously to that request. It was difficult to obtain sufficiently detailed information, given the current situation of the Conference, but that obviously does not deny the Green Group the right to move another request on this issue.

I give Mrs Aelvoet the floor to move the request.

  Aelvoet (V). – (NL) Mr President, it is true that Parliament as a whole originally asked for a debate this week on progress at the Intergovernmental Conference. All of us here in the chamber know that the proposals put forward by both the Irish and Dutch presidencies, to the extent that they are known, are light years away from what the majority of Parliament defined some months ago as the bottom line. There is thus every reason for Parliament to send a clear message about what has to be done. Last week in the Conference of Presidents it was said that essentially the Council thought that a debate, a statement by the Council, would be untimely in view of the forthcoming elections in France. Well, we know full well that the French elections will hinge on European issues, so how can a debate in this House, reviewing the progress achieved, saying what else can be improved and what absolutely must be improved, be detrimental to the elections in France? That really is turning things topsy‐turvy. We think it is intolerable that Parliament should not hold a debate when it needs to, and putting it off to June is too late. We thus insist on a political assessment of the position to date and we want a debate now.

  Martens (PPE). – (NL) Mr President, as you pointed out, there was, I believe, unanimity in the Conference of Presidents that this item would not be debated this week but at the Brussels plenary following the special European Council on 23 May. And if I recall correctly, we shall have a statement from the Council in Brussels on 29 May, after the special European summit, and it will be much better for us to debate it then than this week. We can then have a properly informed debate based on what has been discussed at the special European Council. The Conference of Presidents thought it far more sensible, intelligent and politically expedient to do this on 29 May in Brussels.

(Parliament rejected the request for inclusion)

Thursday and Friday (no change)

Sittings of 28 and 29 May 1997 in Brussels

(no change)

⁽¹⁾

(1) . Urgent procedure – Topical and urgent debate ( subjects proposed) – Speaking time: see Minutes