Paris, 9 December 2002 – Addressing the WEU Assembly’s Plenary Session in Paris last week, the Chairman of the European Convention working group on the Rôle of National Parliaments, Mrs Gisela STUART MP made a plea for a specific input from the Assembly on the institutional balance in Europe.

Thanking Members for the WEU Assembly’s previous contributions to the working groups on both National Parliaments and Defence, Mrs Stuart, who was representing the Convention’s Praesidium, agreed with President Klaus BÜHLER that the Convention had to turn its attention as a matter of urgency to the parliamentary dimension, especially regarding defence issues. Insisting on proper parliamentary scrutiny at the intergovernmental level involving national parliamentarians collectively, she said:

“I put it on record that I have no intention of creating a second chamber or new institutions, but there must be a level at which national parliaments in intergovernmental areas such as defence work together to form a view. That is to take forward the work of the WEU Assembly at the European level.”
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“As parliamentarians, it is important, on issues such as defence which will remain for the foreseeable future at intergovernmental level, that we do not lose the ability to scrutinise the executive and its actions.”

As the first interparliamentary forum for European security and defence, the WEU Assembly has some 50 years’ experience of just such democratic scrutiny to put at the disposal of the European Union.