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PASTOR'S REPORT, July 30, 1979
Page 15
The election of Mrs. Veil (the former Simone Jacob) was not too surprising.
She is a popular political figure in France, though somewhat controversial.
She has been a leading subject on French magazine covers for several years,
sharing space with movie and rock stars, Princess Grace and Princess Caro
line. President Giscard d'Estaing shrewdly employed Mrs. Veil, as a Jewess
in Catholic France, to push a pro-abortion bill through the National
Assembly.
Mrs. Veil's close ties to Giscard d'Estaing (some say she could eventua
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become the first woman premier of France) made her a natural to head the
Giscardian Union for French Democracy ticket in the Euro-parliament elec
tions. The party came out on top in the French voting--for the first time
topping the Socialists, the Communists and the fading Gaullists.
Some of her fellow Parliamentarians in Strasbourg, while admiring her
political skills, nevertheless see Mrs. Veil's election as an attempt by
the French government to control the new assembly and prevent it from
becoming any kind of threat to national sovereignty.
The issue of national sovereignty versus growth of a European supra
nationalism remains the fundamental one, of course. Will the new directly
elected 9arliament aid the pan-European cause?
"You can't mobilize 180 million voters and then have such a parliament do
nothing, believe nothing or prove that nothing has changed," said former
Belgian Premier Leo Tindemans. Yet the parliament has extremely limited
powers. It has authority over the European Economic Community's $21 billion
budget and it can legally (though it is not likely to do so) dismiss the
EEC Commission, which oversees Common Market policy. But it cannot bring
down a national government, cannot force a policy on a member state, and
will be under constant scrutiny by governments to make sure it does not
overstep its authority. "At most, it will be a powerful moral voice,"
reports an Associated Press correspondent in Strasbourg.
Mrs. Louis Weiss, the oldest member at 86 and president of honor on the
first day said the parliament has the task of inspiring a new breed of
international men and women like those who made Europe great during the
middle ages, the renaissance and the age of enlightenment.
"Our institutions have succeeded /through Common Market standardization/
in producing European�beets, butter, cheese, wine, calves, even European
pigs. What they have not succeeded in doing is making Europeans," Mrs.
Weiss said. -- -- --
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"To be truthful," concluded a UPI dispatch from Strasbourg, "the parliament
has not been very inspiring so far. To be fair, it is too soon to judge
whether it will be."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau