European Parliament gets ready for action on research

22 Jul 2009 | News
The committee with responsibility for research has held its first meeting since last month’s elections, and more than half of its members are new.
By Anna Jenkinson

The European Parliament Committee with responsibility for research has held its first meeting since last month’s elections. The meeting was held to prepare the ground for the real work of the committee, which will start in September after the summer break. There has been a big turnover in the 55-strong Industry Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), and more than half the members are new.

New at the helm is the German centre–right MEP Herbert Reul, who took the chair for the closed-door meeting. Reul, who was a teacher before moving into politics in the mid-1980s, was also a member of the ITRE committee during the last legislative term.

The large turnover of the ITRE committee has meant the loss of some of its key names on the research side. Poland’s Jerzy Buzek, for example, was elected as president of the European Parliament and so will no longer sit on the committee. A researcher and lecturer before moving into politics, Buzek was the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Other MEPs closely linked to research in the last legislature, who either didn’t run for election or failed to be re-elected, include Belgium’s Philippe Busquin and Finland’s Reino Paasilinna.

The new committee’s political leanings reflect those of the full parliament, with 20 from the largest political grouping, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), 14 from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, six from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the remainder from the smaller political groupings.

Amongst the decisions taken at this week’s first get together was that of keeping the same rapporteurs for the three energy files, in order to ensure some continuity from the old legislature to the new. Silvia-Adriana Ticau will stay rapporteur for the file on the energy efficiency of buildings, Anni Podimata for energy labelling and Ivo Belet for tyre labelling.

To help the new members become familiar with the subject matter, there will be briefings on some of the main files during the committee’s first public meeting, scheduled for September 2-3.

Representatives for industry, research and energy from the EU’s Swedish presidency will also attend the September meeting to present their programmes to the parliamentary committee.

With its first coordinators’ meeting over, workloads have been discussed, administrative matters sorted and diaries consulted. In short, the scene is set for the committee’s first full meeting in September.

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