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outubro 27, 2004
Incoming EU chief Barroso urges delay to vote: MEP
Incoming European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has called for a delay in a crunch vote threatening to veto his new EU executive before it takes office, a deputy said after talks with him.
"There will be a new proposal, a new commission with changes," said Austrian Socialist Hannes Swoboda, a leader of the Socialist group which held a meeting with Barroso hours before the European Parliament was due to vote.
"I am 95 percent sure that there will not be a vote today," he added.
He was speaking shortly after Socialist group leader Martin Schulz said he could envisage a "one month" delay to a vote on the new EU commission, ahead of the talks with Barroso.
"Everything can happen, who knows?" he said.
Asked whether he would be ready to accept a delay, he replied: "One month."
"I will meet Mr Barroso in some minutes, he asked to have the meeting," he told reporters. "I do not know why. Certainly not to make friendly conversation with me. Let's wait and see," he said.
In what would amount to an unprecedented institutional crisis, a majority of European Parliament members (MEPs) seemed set to veto Barroso's new team because of his refusal to replace Rocco Buttiglione, a former Italian minister, as justice commissioner.
Nearly all the 200 Socialists in the 732-seat legislature and at least 50 Liberals were expected to vote against the Barroso team in Wednesday's noon (1000 GMT) vote, along with smaller left-wing and eurosceptic groups, MEPs said.
With some on the centre-right such as British Conservatives likely to rebel against their own party's support for Barroso, the stage appears set for a stunning defeat for the commission before it will even take office on Monday.
In sometimes heated exchanges with MEPs during a round of meetings Tuesday, Barroso pleaded that with EU leaders preparing to sign the bloc's historic constitution in Rome Friday, now was not the time for institutional civil war.
Buttiglione, a conservative Catholic who would nominally take charge of EU civil liberties, has infuriated many MEPs by arguing that homosexuality is a "sin" and that women should stay at home to make babies.
The commission's Portuguese president-designate reiterated an offer to MEPs to reassign some of Buttiglione's more sensitive duties, such as anti-discrimination policy, to a four-member team of commissioners.
But the offer fell on deaf ears among Socialists and others, who argued that nothing short of Buttiglione's departure to a less high-profile job, or his outright resignation, would suffice.
"It seems to me that the commission will be defeated (Wednesday) unless something happens in the meantime," Liberal leader Graham Watson said.
"I find it incredible that Mr. Buttiglione has not taken the consequences of this and offered his resignation and his withdrawal," he added.
In the worst-case scenario, outgoing commission chief Romano Prodi says he will stay on beyond November 1 as a caretaker until the crisis is resolved. But EU treaties do not spell out how the bloc should proceed in that event.
What is certain is that the EU's image on the world stage will be tarnished yet again just as the 25-nation tries to recover from a year of bitter infighting over the new constitution and the US-led war in Iraq.
And with the United States preparing to elect a new president on November 2, across the Atlantic, the world's most powerful trading bloc will be left all but rudderless.
Publicado por esta às outubro 27, 2004 10:15 AM