Parliament takes administrative provisions to allow technical group of independent members to function

21/12/1999 (Agence Europe)

With the adoption of the Virankovski Report, the plenary created two temporary posts within the European Parliament administration (category C, grade 5) and temporarily gave enhanced status to another post (from A6 to A3). It thus took administrative provisions allowing it to apply the decision of the Court of First Instance which, in the Martinez-De Gaulle/European Parliament affair, decided on 25 November that the "Technical Group of Independent Members (TDI) - joint group" is entitled to treatment equal to that given to other political groups. The TDI group is therefore entitled to a secretariat allowance as well as to fourteen temporary posts (the number of posts is related to the number of MEPs and languages employed). Although the secretariat allowance was obtained through transfer, and some posts were available, it was nonetheless necessary to create two of them. The EP resolution specifies that the financing required for these two posts will be found in the context of implementation of the Budget 200

0 and do not require increased funding. It mainly specifies that, should the court go back on the ruling of 25 November in its final decision, the EP would then be free to go back on its decision also. The posts would "become and remain vacant, and promotion of pay and status would be cancelled".