Action this day
Sir: Nigel Nicolson asks (Tong life, 17 April) what the European Parliament is doing about Bosnia. As he knows, because I discussed it with him some months ago, press reporting of the European Parliament is limited. But we have not been inactive.
The Yugoslav crisis is two years old. To resolve it, the EEC member states have used the same techniques as the League of Nations: intergovernmental diplomacy by consensus. The distinction between the `Twelve' and the European Community is an important one.
The EEC is only involved in the humani- tarian side. The European Parliament has approved huge extra expenditure for refugee relief, administered by the Com- mission. Its committees have heard evi- dence from the Warburton Commission (which included Simone Weil MEP) on crimes against women, from the UNHCR and from other relief agencies. The Foreign Affairs Committee has heard from leading politicians in the former republics and oth- ers involved, such as the 'Twelve's Lord Owen. We have kept ourselves informed. Ex-Yugoslavia has also been debated almost every month by the full parliament in Strasbourg since the invasion of Slove- nia, usually in the presence of the EEC Presidency foreign minister.
On most occasions, a detailed resolution is passed which reflects the consensus of European opinion. These 'compromise res- olutions' have normally been slightly ahead, in policy terms, of EEC foreign affairs min- isters, who meet as 'Twelve'.
Resolutions of the European Parliament on foreign affairs — like those of most par- liamentary assemblies — are only advisory, and will remain so under the Maastricht provisions on a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
The direct democratic input on Euro- pean foreign affairs has not come far since Nigel Nicolson's day as a member of Stras- bourg's Council of Europe in the Fifties. I can, however, report that the European Parliament has just voted to meet formally in Brussels from the autumn.
Edward McMillan-Scott
Foreign Affairs Spokesman, Conservatives in the European Parliament, Rue Belliard, Brussels, Belgium
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