Schroder welcomes ruling on censure, outlines priorities

The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, welcomed the decision of the European Parliament not to censure the Commission. Germany currently holds the EU Presidency, and Mr Schroder made it clear earlier this week that he believed a strong, stable Commission was a prerequisite for the success of the German Presidency.

But he welcomed the fact that the confidence vote represented an act of emancipation on the part of the European Parliament and urged the Commissioners to be more sensitive in their dealings with MEPs in future.

The Foreign Minister, Mr Joshka Fischer, also welcomed the outcome of the vote as confirmation that Germany could depend on a stable Commission during its six-month EU Presidency. But he praised the action of the European Parliament in initiating the censure motion, in accordance with its role as a democratic organ of control within the EU.

He said that Germany would help to investigate the allegations against the Commission during the coming months and backed Mr Schroder's proposal for an anti-corruption group drawn from the Parliament, the Commission and the European Council.

Also yesterday, Mr Schroder attempted to dispel complaints that his centre-left government had lost sight of its objectives and restated his commitment to cut Germany's dole queues. Speaking in Berlin after a meeting of the governing Social Democrats and Greens, Mr Schroder said the fight against unemployment would be the top priority for the coalition during 1999.

He said the first meetings of the Alliance for Jobs, which brings together employers, trade unions and the government, had been encouraging and promised to reduce the cost to firms of taking on new staff. The government has already started an emergency project to provide jobs for 100,000 young people. With four million Germans out of work, much more needs to be done.

The coalition partners appear to have resolved a dispute between them over how quickly Germany's nuclear power stations should be shut down. A new nuclear energy law, to be introduced in the Bundestag on January 27th, will enshrine the pledge to replace nuclear power with more environmentally friendly energy sources.

Recycling nuclear materials will be banned from the beginning of next year, and nuclear power stations will be obliged to dispose of their waste on site. The industry will also have to pay for rigorous checks on the safety of their power stations and to publish the results within a year.

Mr Schroder defended the government's plans to make it easier for foreigners to become German citizens and to allow some immigrants to hold two passports. He said dual citizenship was a necessary transitional stage and it would cause fewer problems than the conservative opposition predicted.

Mr Schroder repeated his view that the EU could not be enlarged eastwards unless an agreement was found on the Agenda 2000 reforms. And he insisted that the EU would have to operate a stricter budgetary policy to ensure that net contributors such as Germany would pay less in the future.

"The resources are not there to finance compromises by reaching for the German treasury," he said.

And he suggested that cohesion funds paid to Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland to ease their path to Economic and Monetary Union be now abolished.