Those elected on list hope EP President will take measures to put end to "discrimination" against them

29/11/1999 (Agence Europe)

The elected members of the Bonino List reacted to the preliminary ruling by the president of the Court of First Instance whereby nothing in the European Parliament regulations prevents MEPs with different political sensitivities to group together (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.5), stating that this "first decision" refloats the initiative in view of the creation at the EP of a Joint Group which "effaces discrimination against MEPs who do not belong to political groups". In a declaration, they state it is "now up to the president of the Parliament to take every possible measure to correct all the decisions taken since 14 September that exclude MEPs of the TDI group (Technical Group of Independent Members) from normal participation in parliamentary work. In their view, this is "defeat" for the majority of the Parliament, which said it was "in one of its usual bureaucratic and anti-democratic reflexes, in favour of dissolution of the technical group".