WRITTEN QUESTION E-1992/01 by Stavros Xarchakos (PPE-DE) to the Commission. Male and female clergy.
Date: 2001-07-06
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: clergy, competence of the Member States, equal treatment, gender equality, religion

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2. How did the Commission institutions monitor the sale of the Leuna works? Did the court proceedings

reveal any shortcomings in this respect?

3. What does the Commission know about favours to parties and prominent individuals in connection

with the sale of the Leuna works to ELF?

4. Will the Commission draw conclusions from the proceedings in Paris, and if so, what?

Answer given by Mr Monti on behalf of the Commission

(19 September 2001)

The privatisation and the restructuring of the Zeitz/Leuna refineries and the Minol station network were
initially approved by the Commission(cid:146)s decision of 24 June 1993. Later Commission(cid:146)s inquiries into this
case only relate to the investment costs of the new refinery near Leuna. The Commission is presently
investigating whether the construction costs of the refinery were inflated (Case C 47/97). In the light of
several national judicial and parliamentary enquiries currently underway in various European states, the
Commission is not in a position to make final conclusions in this latter case.

In its decision of 1993 authorising the aid measures in favour of the privatisation and the restructuring,
the Commission examined also the purchase offers of the parties interested in taking over Leuna and
Minol. Offers were presented on the basis of an open call for tender prepared by Goldman Sachs on behalf
of the German Government.

Following the information received by the responsible Ministry for Economic Affairs and Technology in
Sachsen-Anhalt, the construction of the petrol refining factory by the (cid:145)Mitteldeutsche Erd(cid:246)l-Raffinerie
GmbH (MIDER)(cid:146) was not co-financed under objective 1 of the European regional development fund.

The Commission concluded in its 1993 State aid decision that the purchase offer of the consortium that
constituted at the time of ELF Aquitaine, Thyssen Handel Berlin GmbH and Deutsche SB-Kauf AG was the
best to implement the privatisation.

The examination by the Commission was done on the basis of the information provided by the German
Government in the notification of the aid measures. Member States are required under Article 10 of the EC
Treaty to take all the appropriate measures to ensure fulfilment of the Treaty rules and to abstain from any
measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the objectives of this Treaty, including the provisions on
State aid.

The Commission has no information from the legal proceedings indicating that the information notified
pursuant to Article 88(3) of the EC Treaty was not in accordance with Article 10.

The Commission is aware of allegations about favours to parties and prominent individuals in connection
with the sale of the Leuna works. The examination of such issues is not of the Commission(cid:146)s competence.

It should be noted that judiciary proceedings are the responsibility of the Member States. The Commission
will study with interest any information arising from such proceedings in order to see whether it has to
draw any conclusions.

(2002/C 40 E/171)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1992/01

by Stavros Xarchakos (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(6 July 2001)

Subject: Male and female clergy

Progressive ideas and the special position and value accorded women are distinctive features of the
Orthodox Church. Orthodox priests, for example, have the right to marry, which no Catholic or Muslim

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priest is allowed to do. On 9 January 2001 Commissioner Diamantopoulou replied to my question
No E-3622/00 (1) (cid:129) which raised the subject of the equality of men and women in regard to conducting
religious ceremonies (cid:129) but did not deal with the substance of the matter.

The Commission report entitled (cid:145)Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union(cid:146) (2)
contains a wide range of proposals for strengthening equality within the EU, referring to (cid:145)balanced
participation in decision-making(cid:146), and the introduction of the gender dimension into employment strategy
etc.

Is the refusal to ordain women as priests consistent with the notion of equality promoted by the
Commission and the other EU institutions? What is the Commission(cid:146)s view of the fact that the Protestant
Church has women priests? What initiatives could the Commission take to make that fact more widely
known and to make the other Christian denominations and other faiths (Judaism, Islam etc) realise that
women should have the opportunity to be ordained into the priesthood? What is the Commission(cid:146)s view
of the ban on marriage and the acquisition of a family by clergy of all religions and faiths with the
exception of the Orthodox Church, in which marriage and the creation of a family are regarded as an
achievement and a clear sign of respect for human nature?

(1) OJ C 151 E, 22.5.2001, p. 196.
(2) COM(1999) 106 final, 5 March 1999.

Answer given by Mrs Diamantopoulou on behalf of the Commission

(4 September 2001)

As already stated in its answer to written question E-3622/00 by the Honourable Member (1),
the
Commission cannot become involved and comment on issues which are outside Community jurisdiction,
such as the organisation, performance and conducting of religious ceremonies which are based on rules
peculiar to each religion.

(1) OJ C 151 E, 22.5.2001.

(2002/C 40 E/172)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-2003/01

by Robert Goebbels (PSE) to the Commission

(6 July 2001)

Subject: European statistics on per capita income

The European Union, in the shape of Eurostat, regularly produces statistics comparing factors such as per
capita income in the different Member States of the European Union. A recent publication compared the
differences in income between the Member States of the Union and the applicant countries. With the index
for the European average set at 100, the comparison shows that the poorest country in an enlarged
Europe would be Bulgaria (index 23), while the richest country would be Luxembourg (index 181). To
achieve these results, Eurostat calculates the gross domestic product of each country in purchasing power
parity and divides this figure by the number of inhabitants of the country. Is it not the case that this
method leads to distorted results, particularly as regards Luxembourg where GDP is the product of the
work of residents and non-residents, since the latter are not taken into account by Eurostat when it divides
GDP by the number of inhabitants?

A factor which is insignificant in all the other Union countries is highly significant in the case of
Luxembourg, where the total workforce of 275 000 (April 2001) includes some 95 000 non-resident
frontier workers, in other words more than 37 % of the working population. Should Eurostat not review
the methodology it uses for statistics of this kind, which ultimately are inaccurate?