COUNCIL OF MINISTERS: GENERAL SECRETARIAT SEEKS PLANNING PERMISSION FOR NEW BUILDING.

Whilst the Council's "Antici" group, which is responsible notably for real estate policy, has reached an agreement in principle on the construction of the LEX building - Euro 8.5 million has been set aside for 2002 -, a report from the General Secretary on the consequences of future enlargement in terms of staff and office space requirements has still to be submitted in March to enable the group to decide notably upon the configuration of meeting rooms. The central question concerns the number of interpretation booths to be installed in each conference chamber. A preliminary assessment would appear to suggest that a complete multilingual system need not be installed in all the rooms since the Joint Interpreting Service does not expect to be able to delegate more than three 21-languages team per day to the Council in 2004. There is general agreement that at the present juncture and into the medium term, the LEX should be the only new building the Council requires, even with the prospect of all European Council sessions being held in Brussels in the future, although...