Enlargement

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in Financial Times Online - www.ft.com on Sat 1st May 2004

On Monday 3 May 162 new Members of the European Parliament are to take their seats at Strasbourg. The total size of the Parliament will expand to 788 only in order to shrink again to 732 Members when, after the elections, the new Parliament reassembles in July. The House will have to get used to changing size as the IGC is likely to make further adjustments to the number of seats per member state and yet more candidates knock on the door.

The European Parliament is fairly well prepared to absorb the shock of enlargement. For many years it has run busy joint committees with the national parliaments of each of the accession states. This has been a useful exercise in exposing common problems, building party linkages and sharpening the performance of MEPs and MPs alike in scrutinising the formal accession negotiations and the conduct of the pre-accession strategies. Parliamentary delegations from the candidate countries have been increasingly frequent visitors to Brussels and Strasbourg. All 13 candidates sent two national MPs each plus two alternates to the European Convention.

Contact was increased markedly when Irishman Pat Cox became President in January 2002. Cox has spent many days travelling through the candidate countries, increasing the profile of the Parliament across Europe. At his instigation a number of national MPs from the accession states became official observers of the work of the Parliament. These people have been mostly silent witnesses to the work of the groups and the committees, and have been unable to speak or vote in the plenary sessions. A small number, mainly those who also served in the Convention, have nevertheless made an impression.

During April the ten new Commissioners have appeared in front of the parliamentary committees relevant to their future portfolio. Those with party political affiliations have also been interrogated at group meetings. While this European Parliamentary experience is only a pale shadow of the US system of congressional hearings, MEPs have been able to gauge the professional suitability and political acumen of the nominees. Some of the designate Commissioners, who tend to be diplomats and technocrats, have been quite heavily criticised by MEPs for their obvious lack of parliamentary experience. Others, notably Greek Cypriot Kyprianou, have come under fire for their political views. Although all ten will be approved as members of the college by the Parliament next week, the scene is set for the autumn when a more rigorous, comprehensive and decisive grilling will take place of the new Commissioners who are to take office on 1 November.

At a technical level, the introduction of nine new languages to the work of the Parliament has been a large challenge. Possible translation combinations shoot up from 110 to 380. (Had the Greek Cypriots not blocked the accession of their Turkish compatriots, the number of possibilities would have risen to 420.) The Parliament has adopted a strategy of what it calls 'controlled multilingualism', designed to ensure that not all MEPs have to be linguists, but that the House still manages to function. If interpreters are available they will be used. But as nobody from Estonia has been found to speak Maltese, it is likely that a hub and spoke system will rapidly develop in which other languages are interpreted into and out of English and French.

Building works prevail in both Brussels and Strasbourg. Fabienne Keller, Mayor of Strasbourg, has increased her efforts to keep the Parliament on its costly monthly circus to her provincial city. Apparently there are to be flights to Munich, only 350 kilometres away from Strasbourg as the corbeau flies, from all over Eastern Europe; and in 2007 there will be a Thalys link to Paris, which should be helpful to Parisian MEPs.

Enlargement has certainly sharpened the debate about the working conditions of Members. In EU-15 the differential between the salaries of the richest (Italian) MEPs and the poorest (Spanish) was 3:1. In EU-25 the ratio widens to 14:1. No Hungarian MEP, on a wage of € 800 a month, will be able to afford to live in Brussels. So there will be renewed pressure under the incoming Dutch presidency of the Council to reach the agreement on the notorious Members' Statute which eluded the ministers in January. The Statute would equalise pay between all Euro MPs and ensure that travel expenses were paid for real costs incurred.

It is more difficult to speculate on how enlargement will affect the Parliament politically. At the June elections, the two biggest groups of conservatives (EPP-ED) and socialists (PES) are likely to gain most new Members because of the essentially bipolar nature of politics in Central and Eastern Europe. Adherence in the accession countries to the causes of Liberals and Greens tends to be rather counter-intuitive, while old-fashioned communism and fascism are distinctly unfashionable. But moves are afoot to redraw the party political boundaries in the centre ground of the Parliament. Several members of the EPP, including Francois Bayrou's UDF, are disaffected by their group's lurch to the Eurosceptical right. In Italy the partisan picture is becoming wonderfully clarified as Romano Prodi succeeds in marshalling the forces ranged against Berlusconi.

As the European Union's agenda begins to move forward from constitutional issues, as it must, the disposition of the new MEPs will be keenly watched. If precedent is anything to go by, parliamentarians from newly-joined states will greatly enjoy the fertile and pluralistic politics of the European Union, and their views will soon begin to develop truly European perspectives.