WRITTEN QUESTION P-0488/98 by Patricia McKenna (V) to the Commission (17 February 1998)

Subject: Information activities on the Amsterdam Treaty

The European Commission recently began circulating the second edition of its booklet 'A new Treaty for Europe: a citizen's guide', as a free insert in Irish news publications. The booklet has been published as part of the Prince information programme.

Last summer the Commission said that the first edition of this booklet had a print run of 534 000 for the EU as a whole and 3 000 for Ireland in particular.

How many copies of the second edition have been printed? Can the Commission indicate how many copies have been allocated to each Member State?

How much has the Commission spent on printing and circulating this booklet to date? Can it give a breakdown of expenditure for each Member State?

How many further copies of the booklet (both current and future editions) does the Commission plan to have printed, and can it indicate how many copies it plans to allocate to each Member State?

The Commission is also in the process of organizing public seminars and conferences in Ireland on the Amsterdam Treaty. Can it give details of how many such events on the Amsterdam Treaty it will be holding in Ireland, how this will compare with other Member States and a breakdown thereof? Under what programme(s) are the events taking place?

Can the Commission indicate how much will be spent on organizing such events in each Member State?

Answer given by Mr Oreja on behalf of the Commission (7 April 1998)

The first edition of the brochure 'A new Treaty for Europe-Citizens guide' cost ECU 99 050. 534 000 brochures were printed at a cost of ECU 0.18 per unit. 1 384 000 brochures were printed in a second edition at a cost of ECU 161 480 that is ECU 0.12 per unit. Brochures were distributed in the Member States, inter alia by the offices of the Parliament and Commission, as follows:

>TABLE>

As previously indicated to the Honourable Member, brochures were also sent to the Commission delegations in third countries and to the subscribers of mailing lists. The stastistics shown in the above table include a number of special mailings as well as brochures distributed directly to citizens by the Commission at their request. There is no breakdown as to the exact number of these brochures between Member States.

Concerning the organisation of public seminars and conferences on the Amsterdam Treaty, the Commission is not directly organising anything in any of the Member States. The Commission published a call for proposals (AP/97 - 01/TF) requesting information projects to be cofinanced by the Commission under the priority information action 'Building Europe together', one of the three initiatives of Prince, the information programme for the citizens of Europe, jointly decided by the Parliament and the Commission. A breakdown per Member State of the projects co-financed through the call for proposals is being forwarded directly to the Honourable Member and to the Secretariat general of the Parliament. Three Irish projects were selected (the Irish Council of Trade Unions, the National Women's Council of Ireland and the European Movement). In the meantime the ICTU has requested the Commission to cancel the forecast activity.

While the Commission is not organising conferences or seminars in Ireland, in co-operation with the Parliament's office it is organising a series of debates on themes relevant to the Treaty, with balanced participation between speakers on both sides of the debate. Six debates in all are planned and two have already taken place. The amount being spent (covering advertising and refreshments but not administrative costs) will be approximately £25 600. This expenditure is part of the Prince programme, which was approved by the Parliament.