EPP and Socialists & Democrats reach technical agreement
It’s official: the EPP and the Socialists & Democrats have reached a technical agreement on splitting the European Parliament presidency and the chairmanships of the committees.
For the committees, negotiations are still in progress, but the major committees - including foreign affairs, environment, industry, agriculture, budgets and legal affairs - seem likely to be split between the two biggest Groups. However, Jean Quatremer of French newspaper Libération is reporting that the British Liberal Democrats will get the Chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, possibly for Andrew Duff (with the other Groups apparently protesting about the original choice, the more economically liberal Sharon Bowles).
Talks are continuing on the final positions, and there will be more on TheNewEP.eu later in the week.
The Parliament presidency seems likely to be split between the EPP (Jerzy Buzek, for the first part of this parliament) and the Socialist & Democrats (probably the Group’s leader, Martin Schulz).
However, Graham Watson, the Liberal candidate, is fighting on: he is due to participate in today’s Presidential Debate (along with Mr Buzek and Swedish Left Party candidate Eva-Britt Svensson) and will take heart from the fact that the choice of Parliament president is made by secret ballot: in 2001, the year of the first Campaign for Parliamentary Reform and European Voice debate, Socialist candidate David Martin almost defeated the candidate that had been agreed between the EPP and Liberals, Pat Cox.
You can follow the debate live on TheNewEP.eu from 1230 CET today.
The last element of the EPP-Socialist technical agreement seems to be the setting of the date for the election of the Commission president: José Manuel Barroso is likely to get the Parliament’s backing on 14 September, although this may still be delayed until after the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, scheduled for 2 October.
David O’Leary