Le Pen `arsenal' the only cause of excitement

The European Parliament had a tough act to follow after the thrills of last week. Yet for the few journalists left in Brussels yesterday, hope sprang anew with a French MEP's excited announcement that rocket-launchers, pump-action machineguns and everything short of a small atomic bomb had been found in the car of Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen, of the French National Front.

Alas, his party colleague, Mr Jean-Claude Martinez, jumped up to bellow that it was nothing more than "a tear-gas canister that can be found in any supermarket" and that as Mr Le Pen's official security protection ended at the Franco-Belgian border, he needed a bodyguard to protect him all the way to Brussels. And official bodyguards needed official weapons.

So, "no rockets, no missile-launchers, no question of Albanian terrorists". Maybe, he ventured, the changing climate had forced water into Mr Olivier Duhamel's brain "or perhaps he's been drinking British wine . . ."

It was all downhill from there as the MEPs, despite the chastisements of the President, chatted with or abused their colleagues through a series of votes.

The most salient of these was the parliament's resolution in favour of the appointment of an interim commission under a commission president to see through the unexpired part of the current Commission's term, leaving the new, incoming parliament with the prerogative of appointing the millennium commission.

The resolution further insisted that hearing procedures should apply to the approval of both commissions, as laid down in the Amsterdam Treaty, and that a procedure under which individual commissioners could be called to account should also be adopted.

It also "insists" that the number of new women commissioners should increase substantially in the new commission.

And to prove its good faith in advance of the elections, it not only "looks forward" to the second report by the Committee of Independent Experts which reviews the Commission's culture, practices and procedures, it also called on member-states to reach agreement on its proposal regarding a common statute for its own members to help it "improve its credibility and accountability vis- a-vis public opinion".

Other parliament business yesterday included an opportunity to extend defective product liability law to agricultural feed-stuffs which, had it been passed, would have had in its sights the suppliers of bone-meal containing the seeds of BSE. It was lost by 11 votes.

Yesterday also supplied a footnote to EU history with what was probably the final report from Mr Leo Tindemans, the former Belgian prime minister who operated at the fore of European politics for a generation. As the former economics lecturer Mr Pat Cox recalled, he was the writer of the EEC's baseline reports on EMU in 1975. Yesterday his pitch was for a more emollient approach towards North Korea.

Meanwhile, Mr Santer has by no means disappeared from public discourse. This time, the joke was on the British Conservatives who are being taunted with the prospect of Mr Santer returning to the parliament in triumph as head of the European People's Party, which also happens to be home to 15 of the Tories' number.

It could happen. Could the British take it?