Paris, 13 June 2005 −The WEU Assembly decided on Monday to amend its Rules so as to give greater rights of participation in its decision-making processes to those EU member states which have observer status in WEU and whose governments play a full part in the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in the EU framework.

This decision concerns the five WEU “observer” countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) and the “affiliate observers” in the WEU Assembly (Cyprus and Malta) which until now had no voting rights in the Assembly. It was decided to give parliamentarians from these countries voting rights in the Assembly’s committees, which draw up the resolutions and recommendations that are submitted to the plenary session.

In presenting his report, Jean-Guy Branger (France, Federated Group) underlined that this decision was in keeping with the WEU Assembly’s longstanding objective of engaging in interparliamentary dialogue on European security and defence issues. He pointed out that the WEU Assembly is “the only instrument available to the national parliaments of the European states involved in the ESDP for participating collectively in an institutional dialogue with the intergovernmental decision-makers”.