[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  VISIT TO THE SENATE BY THE HONORABLE PATRICK COX, PRESIDENT OF THE 
                          EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

  Mr. ALLEN. I thank the Senator because I know he is talking about a 
very important issue to all the people of America.
  I do have the honor of presenting to my Senate colleagues the 
Honorable Patrick Cox, who is the President of the European Parliament. 
As my colleagues know, the European Parliament is the only directly 
elected body in the European Union and the only popularly elected 
international assembly in the entire world.
  Every 5 years, Europe's 375 million citizens have the chance to vote 
for 626 representatives. President Cox's position is the equivalent of 
the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate combined. So 
he is Ted Stevens and Denny Hastert together.
  I appreciate the indulgence of the Senator from Montana, and I 
request my colleagues to take a moment to introduce themselves to 
President Cox because we do have so many transatlantic bonds, not only 
philosophically but also economically for jobs.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BAUCUS. We are very honored to have our guest. I don't know how 
long he wants to stay. There are so many transatlantic issues we can 
address.
  I see my very good colleague from Iowa in the Chamber, and we have 
lots of agricultural issues. We would also like to learn from Europe 
about European health care systems. I am sure there are provisions in 
Europe we could look at and adopt. No country has a monopoly on good 
ideas and no region of the country has a monopoly on good ideas.
  I urge our guest to stay as long as he possibly can and hopefully 
have time to converse over some of these issues so we can get a better 
idea of how we can resolve some of these huge issues, including 
agricultural and other trade issues. We all know the more we work 
together, the better we will be on both sides of the Atlantic.
  Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. President.

                          ____________________