EURO-PARLIAMENT UPDATE: On Tuesday July 17, the first session of the enlarged and directly-elected European Parliament convened in Strasbourg, France. The first order of business for the 410 delegates was the election of the assembly's president. The post went to a woman — Simone Veil of France. Mrs. Veil, 52, the former French minister of health and social services, is also a Jew. She and her family were taken from France to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944 when she was 17 years old. She alone survived the ordeal — with a tatooed concentration camp number on her arm which she conceals to this day beneath long-sleeved dresses.
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 Caroline. 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 eventually become the first woman premier of France) made her a natural to head the Giscardian Union for French Democracy ticket in the Euro-parliament elections. 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 parliament 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.
"To be truthful," concluded a UP1 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."
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