WRITTEN QUESTION E-2970/00

by Erik Meijer (GUE/NGL) to the Council

(25 September 2000)

Subject: Incomplete information about the composition of the Council

1. Is the Council aware that in the list of members of the Council of the European Union, distributed for the part-session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg from 4 to 8 September, the following names are given for the Netherlands: Dr A. Peper, as Minister of Foreign Affairs and National Relations; K.G. de Vries, as Minister of Social Affairs and Employment; and Dr W.A.F.G. Vermeend, as Deputy Minister of Finance?

2. Can you conform that the first-mentioned person in question 1 ceased to hold the post in question on 13 March 2000 and that the other two persons have been responsible for other policy areas since 24 March 2000? What is the reason fort continuing to refer to them as members of the Council, when continued participation on their part in the relevant councils of specialist ministers would be illegal?

3. Can you also explain why all ministers and deputy ministers are listed with their forenames and (with the exception of Germany and Austria) without their academic titles, while all the Dutch members of the Council appear without forenames but with academic titles?

What is the reason for giving the Dutch members of the Council a special status of relative anonymity, with the impression of greater distance from the people they are supposed to represent?

4. Are you prepared to work towards ensuring that subsequent lists of members of the Council are up-to-dated and uniform in nature?

Reply

(22 December 2000)

The Council thanks the Honourable Member for his questions and would take this opportunity to point out the following:

- the General Secretariat of the Council regularly publishes, in all the official languages of the European Union, a list of the members of the Governments of the Member States who regularly take part in Council meetings. This list contains the names, forenames and positions of all Prime Ministers, Ministers and State Secretaries;

- after each change in the composition of the Government of a Member State, this list is updated on the basis of the information appearing in the Official Gazette of that Member State. As regards the Netherlands, the list was updated in April 2000, i.e. in the month following the reshuffling of the Netherlands Government;

- the lists are forwarded regularly for information to the relevant departments of the European Parliament and of the Commission. The document to which the Honourable Member refers is a document published by the European Parliament;

- the composition of the Governments of the Member States is also published for information on the Internet website http://europa.eu.int/idea, under the headings Search by organisational entities, then Institutions and then Council of the European Union and Representatives of the Governments of the Member States who regularly take part in Council meetings;

- in addition, each year, the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities publishes an Interinstitutional Directory Who's who in the European Union?. The latest version is that of January 2000 (date of going to press) and thus contains all the members of Governments at that date, and hence also the members referred to by the Honourable Member. The General Secretariat of the Council, for its part, publishes an Extract from the Interinstitutional Directory in the autumn of each year;

- the mistakes to which the Honourable Member refers appear merely to be circumstantial ones.