Pat Cox elected president of European Parliament

Victor

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0115/breaking29.htm

The European Parliament has elected Munster MEP Mr Pat Cox as its 24th president.

Following three rounds of voting Mr Cox secured his widely anticipated victory with 298 votes, against 237 for Scottish Labour deputy Mr David Martin and 33 for Mr Jens-Peter Bonde. The threshold for victory was 285 out of a total 586 votes cast.

Mr Cox has promised to enliven parliament's multilingual debates by allowing more direct questioning of European commissioners and taking some of the power to control speaking time out of the hands of political group leaders.

"I sense there is an appetite for change. There is a feeling in this house that we need to do more politics," he told parliament before members began the secret voting.

Support from the smaller political groups in the parliament including the Greens and the Fianna Fáil-aligned Union for Europe of the Nations, was one of the defining factor in the election race.

The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern congratulated Mr Cox on his "wonderful achievement . . . He has worked tirelessly in Europe for all European citizens and his election is a tribute to his commitment to the European ideal . . ."

Mr Ahern added the appointment underlined the fact that small nations have a key role to play in Europe.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said Mr Cox was taking on his ahead of the Future of Europe debate and when greetings for new members were being prepared.

Mr Cox ends the trend of the office of president moving between the two largest groups in the parliament - the conservative European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialists.

As deputy leader of the Liberals Mr Cox agreed to back Ms Nicole Fontaine, the current president in 1999, in return for a promise of support for him this year.

Additional reporting Reuters

mike65

European Parliment....you mean there is one....?

What do they do there?

Seriously though, while peeps here can throw their hats in the air, it don't mean much as far as I can see, his speech hit all the right buttons for his audience, ie the Parliment but the Commsion and the Council of Ministers won't let the elected prols get any more power than absolutly necessary.

Mike.

Typedef

No doubt the ascention of Mr Cox will be used as an excuse and a qualification as to why the democratic will of the people of Ireland via referendum should be prorouged and why the Irish will have to revote on the Nice referendum. Obviously if the man is of Irish descent the EU can't be all bad. Therefore whilst "we" must respect the "democratic will of the people North and South" vis-a-vis the Good Friday Agreement, "we" will not have our "democratic will" respected when it comes to Nice, the government is comitted to a re-run without the slightest renegotiation of the treaty. If the Good Friday Agreement had been rejected by Northern Unionists would the Agreement have been renegotiated or would the Northern people have been told they were "misinformed" and therefore had to "re-run" the vote? In my opinion the election of Mr Cox will be used as a diversionary tactic for the pro-Nice-rerun campaign, as a smokescreen, nay a miasma, a quagmire of issue deflection, so that instead of renegotiating Nice or at least using Ireland's veto to block a treaty Ireland's people rejected by referendum, the election of Mr Cox will be used as a kind of all embracing anti-Anti-Nice argument. People will say, "why should Ireland give up large portions of it's voting rights so that the bigger countries in the EU can have more influence why should Ireland give up the automatic right to have an Eu Comissioner? this isn't what we signed up for", and the answer will be, "Pat Cox was elected as President, therefore Irish neutrality will not be afffected, no that's not a B-52 bomber, it's an F-16 flying over Shannon, now vote as we say". Poetry in motion really.

"It's not just the Shoe tax were rounding up on the Euro conversion, we're rounding up the corporate tax too"

Think Euro, the Federal union is in your future!

daveirl

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