Breeze in Parliament

By no popular demand whatsoever, the European Parliament met at Strasbourg last week. Despite its sonorous and imposing name, it may well be the least effective arm of the expanding Common Market. Its 183 members, including 41 new Danish, Irish and British delegates, are not elected but appointed by their national legislatures. Established in 1958, the Strasbourg assembly never has had any say over the EEC's budget, personnel or policies. All of these are controlled by the large bureaucratic machine in Brussels. The European Parliament's one real power is the right to censure or even dismiss the Common Market Commission, also in Brussels. The members have never used that power-in part because they have no authority to appoint a new commission; that privilege is reserved for the Council of Ministers, named by member governments.

In short, the European Parliament is something of a laughingstock among legislatures. It has no permanent home and meets variously in Strasbourg or Luxembourg, while its 13 standing committees usually convene in Brussels. The Parliamentarians, 1,200 members of the secretariat and 30 tons of documents are perpetually shuttling between the three cities. That predicament has turned a Luxembourg trucking company into one of the continent's most prosperous and made good business for hotels. It has also earned some of the peripatetic Parliamentarians the distinction of being the hardest-drinking legislators in the world and made the "Strasbourg girl friend" a new Euro-mantic tradition.

Last week's session, however, was considerably livelier than the somnolent meetings of the past. For one thing, most members were present; ordinarily at least 50% are absent, partly because they receive no salary. The more compelling reason, however, was that the newly arrived British delegation had declared its ambitious intention of turning the European Parliament into a sort of continental Westminster. "We are going to operate as if this were our own Parliament." declared Peter Kirk. 44. leader of the 21-person British delegation (the antiMarket Labor Party declined to send its allotted 15 delegates). "We will make this a real backbenchers' Parliament." He added, somewhat undiplomatically: "Too bad it will be difficult to interrupt all those foreign-language speeches, but I suppose it can't be helped."

In a 22-page memorandum. Kirk proposed, among other things, that the Parliament provide for a question period, so that Common Market Commissioners might be grilled, and set up a committee to seek advice from national parliaments, universities and other sources on how to reform itself. The standing committees, he suggested, should stop scrutinizing legislative fine print and assay instead the long-term policies of the Commission and Council of Ministers. Professing himself "astonished at the latent powers" already available. Kirk proposed that Parliament use its limited authority to question the EEC budget and set up a permanent commission to examine the accounts of all Common Market institutions. As he put it, "Initiatives are not given but seized. By these means this Parliament will live and people will clamor to be represented in it."

Inevitable. Most Parliamentarians greeted the proposals with enthusiasm, though one unimpressed French deputy sneered at the "newcomers' zeal, which will soon rub off once they get used to the routine." Others were upset at the un-British way in which Kirk had leaked some of his proposals before presenting them to Parliament. But as Alain Poher, president of the French Senate, summed up for the majority: "The days of Gaullism are over. We welcome this fresh breeze. We have talked enough about margarine."

No one, of course, expects immediate or drastic reform. But as Kirk told TIME'S Robert Kroon last week, "I think we have immense support for our reform projects. I even believe we have the majority of the Commission with us, and we are going to play the Council of Ministers through that Commission. The Council is the real spanner in the works"-a reference to the Council's insistence on keeping all decision-making power in its own hands. Direct elections, Kirk believes, though not imminent, are inevitable. "At some time we should end this dual European-national mandate for Strasbourg M.P.s. We need full-time Parliamentarians here."

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