EU legal battle rests on decision by new president

The new President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, will announce tomorrow whether he is launching a legal power battle with EU governments - less than three weeks after taking office.

Mr Cox, the first Irishman to be elected President, is considering whether he will take EU governments to the European Court of Justice.

Euro-MPs on the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee have already voted by a narrow majority to do so - but the final decision rests with the President himself.

EU ambassadors discussed the problem this afternoon without resolving it and now await Mr Cox’s pronouncement from Cork in the morning.

The move is being threatened because of a complex piece of EU legislation about company law which has been in the pipeline for years.

Until now it has been negotiated under an EU Treaty Article which gives Euro-MPs an equal say in the outcome, alongside ministers.

But now, as draft laws on a European Company Statute are going through, the ministers have changed the ‘‘legal base’’ - effectively cutting the European Parliament out of the process.

EU officials say the switch is purely administrative: in the EU, proposed legislation which involves harmonising national laws is something in which MEPs have a say.

The planned company statute, which cuts red tape and bureaucracy for firms setting up across the EU, is now deemed not to amount to harmonisation of national law, however, and the basis on which it is being negotiated is being changed.

However arcane the legal point, it highlights the fact that Mr Cox is heading a Parliament which is increasingly sensitive about its powers - or lack of them.

Faced with a Legal Affairs Committee pushing for court action, Mr Cox has been thrown in the deep end, forced to decide whether to go to court and instantly antagonise EU leaders - who hugely welcomed his election earlier this month - or let the matter drop and upset MEPs who want a robust response.

‘‘The final authority rests with me and I will take my responsibilities,’’ Mr Cox said today. ‘‘Whatever I do it will not please everyone, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.’’

Tonight he held talks with senior MEPs at European Parliament headquarters in Brussels. Leaders of centre-right MEPs pressed him to take court action, but the centre-left urged restraint. The Greens were split.

‘‘The fact is that the Parliament already has considerable powers in legislative areas such as economic reform and liberalisation, which people want,’’ said a spokesman for Mr Cox.

‘‘And the company statute when introduced will ease the red tape impeding companies. But at the same time there is a principle here: can EU governments just change the way they make laws and so determine whether Parliament has a voice or not? Mr Cox is considering the issue overnight and will announce a decision tomorrow.’’

The issue of European Parliament powers is about to be put on the agenda for the year-long Convention on Europe’s future which starts meeting at the end of February.

Earlier this week Britain’s Minister for Europe, Peter Hain, who will be a member of the Convention, said the European Parliament should ‘‘settle down’’ and get to grips with the power it already has before seeking more.

Mr Cox said that extending powers was a ‘‘secondary’’ question in his list of priorities as the new President.

‘‘The question is not whether the European Parliament should have more powers, but whether Europe should have more democracy.’’

Mr Cox, an independent MEP since 1989 for the constituency of Munster, beat Scottish Labour MEP David Martin by 298 votes to 237 to take the most prized and prestigious job in the only democratically-elected EU institution.

Within minutes he declared his intention to fight for more democratic control in the EU. He said it was a ‘‘grave deficiency’’ that so many EU laws were made by ministers in secret.

And he called for more of the EU’s £55 billion-a-year budget to be brought under control of the European Parliament.