11.

In view of the purpose of immunity, is that view contrary to primary Community law, as the civil claimant contends, taking into account the practice of holding annual sessions which succeed each other without a break? In that regard the argument concerning extraordinary sessions requires particular attention. Mr Wybot argues that before 1965 the Assembly was not in session between the end of the ECSC session in June each year and the opening of the EEC/EAEC session in October. That period constituted the ‘interval’ during which, as the Court stated in Case 101/63, extraordinary sessions might be held. Since the unification resulting from the 1965 Merger Treaty, all mention of the closure of sessions has been removed and in order to maintain the possibility of extraordinary sessions the Court's position as set out in Wagner must be modified so as to define the term ‘session’ by reference to the periods during which Parliament is actually sitting. That reasoning, and the solution it leads to, must be rejected. First of all, as I have already pointed out, the Court's judgment stated that the annual EEC/EAEC session came to an end only when the Assembly adopted the decision closing the session. Consequently, even at that time there was nothing to prevent the Parliament from meeting without a break and closing the annual session on the eve of the following session. That, furthermore, was the hypothesis underlying the Opinion of Mr Advocate General Lagrange. As he pointed out, ‘the system adopted by the European Parliament is... based on the existence of an annual session, which is never closed (nor moreover suspended) but is ‘adjourned’ on dates and for a period fixed by the Assembly itself and exceptionally under certain conditions by the “enlarged Bureau”’. He went on to raise the question of the compatibility of permanent sessions with ‘the institution of a system of extraordinary sessions provided for by the Treaties’. (Case 101/63, cited above, Opinion, at pp. 206 and 207). As may be seen, the nature of the problem of interpretation with which the Court was then faced was the same as that now before it. That conclusion is not, however, sufficient. We must be certain that the Assembly's practice does not preclude the possibility of meeting in extraordinary session. In that regard I would make the following two observations. The rules laid down in the Treaty are binding on the Parliament just as they are on any other institution. The Rules of Procedure expressly comply with those rules since, in Article 9 (5), they provide that the Parliament may be convened ‘exceptionally’. Moreover, the European Assembly is not the only body with the power to call extraordinary sessions, since they may be convened not only at the request of Members but also at the request of the Council or the Commission. The Parliament's practice cannot, therefore, deprive those institutions of a prerogative granted to them by the Treaties. Leaving aside those questions of principle, let me add that the holding of extraordinary sessions is far from being a mere theoretical possibility. An extraordinary session is not intended merely to prolong the work of the Parliament for an additional period after the end of the ordinary session. It may also be an appropriate means of emphasizing the importance of the issues on its agenda. That is the explanation for the possibility aforded by Article 9 (5) and the rights given by the Treaties to the Council and the Commission, in addition to the provisions of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament regarding topical and urgent debates (Articles 48 and 57). The Court referred to that, in relation to the essential procedural requirement of consultation of the Parliament by the Council, in the Roquette case, where it is stated that ‘the Council could have made use of the possibility it had under Article 139 of the Treaty to ask for an extraordinary session of the Assembly especially as the Bureau of the Parliament on 1 March and 10 May 1979 drew its attention to that possibility’ (Case 138/79 [1980] ECR 3333, paragraphe 36, my emphasis). It is thus conceivable that the Parliament might, in order to hold an extraordinary session, close the annual session early. Indeed, in Case 101/63 the Court held that ‘no provision prohibits [extraordinary sessions] from being fixed a long time in advance’ ([1964] ECR at p. 201). Whatever the current practice may be, the existence of a continuous ordinary session does not prevent the Parliament from creating the intervals necessary for holding an extraordinary session and even requires it to do so when the conditions laid down in the Treaties are met.