HÄNSCH LEADS SWEEPING REFORM OF PARLIAMENT

by Rory Watson

(The European, 23-29 September 1994)

European Parliament president Klaus Hänsch is putting into immediate effect his first reforms to the 567-member assembly, with the aim of making it more efficient and bringing power closer to voters.

MEPs will be asked to work harder and more quickly, and monitor commissioners more closely. The long-overdue new broom is also designed to ensure EU governments and the European Commission are more accountable to the Union's only democratically elected institution.

The first stage of the reform package will be put into operation during the Parliament's week-long plenary session opening in Strasbourg on 26 September.

As soon as he was elected president in July, Hänsch started planning his strategy. He has told close associates that it was "now or never" if the moves to speed up parliamentary business are to work.

The innovations, which are likely to be tried on an experimental basis until Christmas, are the most sweeping in the 15-year life of the directly elected parliament. They will affect the way MEPs vote, debate legislation and topical events, conduct specialised committee meetings and cross-examine commissioners.

Under the new format for plenary sessions, MEPs will vote on debates at lunchtime, instead of late in the evening or even two days later as happens now. Certain afternoons will be set aside for the first time for parliamentary committees to prepare business for the current or subsequent session. Legislative debates will be held over three days, and MEPs are pressing for appropriate European Commissioners to attend. They also want government ministers, representing the EU presidency, to be present throughout. Normally, ministers are only in Strasbourg for one day of the session.

Stricter selection will be applied to topics for emergency debate to prevent MEPs rushing to offer their opinions on any issue anywhere in the world.

"This new efficiency is also designed to be media and voter friendly. With votes much earlier, the media will be able to report events which can then be read in the following day's newspapers. It will bring our work closer to the public," explained an official.

The reforms are backed by Parliament's political groups. Pauline Green, leader of the 198-member Socialist group, said: "We are totally in support of a trial period to reorganise the work of Parliament and to make it more friendly to the media and the electorate."

The package also provides for more frequent and longer plenary meetings of MEPs in Brussels next year, in addition to the 12 weeklong sessions planned for Strasbourg. Under a proposal to be put to MEPs this month, they would all gather for five three-day meetings in Brussels during 1995, conpared with the four two-day sessions this year.

"This, is not a political debate. President Hänsch does not wish to change the balance of the different seats, but to makethe Parllament work more efficiently in the different places," said a senior source.

An early indication of the Parliament's determination to sharpen its work came earlier this month when Commission President Jacques Delors was subjected for the first tune to a rapid-fire Westminster-style question time by MEPs.

"We feel this was a great success and more useful than the rambling questions and soporific replies we used to experience with our previous question-time format," said one official.

There will now be moves to include the innovation in every parliamentary session, to extend it to other commissioners and to continue it when Jacques Santer takes over as Commission President next january.