The European People's Party congress got under way yesterday with a view to reconfirming its majority in the European parliament after the June elections.

Over 700 delegates, including 13 prime ministers and deputy prime ministers, along with leaders of member parties and European commissioners, convened in Brussels for the two-day congress. With 232 members in parliament, the EPP is Europe's largest political party.

Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, whose Nationalist Party is affiliated to the EPP, will be one of 13 prime ministers delivering a speech during this morning's plenary session.

A series of workshops were held yesterday, intended to draw up the 2004-2009 action programme and electoral manifesto, two documents which will encompass several issues - from sustainable development to immigration to job creation.

Speaking at a news conference yesterday, EPP president Wilfried Martens described the action programme as a "concrete and practical" exercise, the result of a year's debate between the 65 EPP parties, including those in acceding states.

Mr Martens renewed the EPP's plea to the Irish presidency for the EU to respect the results of the June European elections before naming a Commission president.

Commenting about his party's track record, Mr Martens argued that only the EPP was in a position to put things back on track after the collapse of the Intergovernmental Conference on the draft constitution.

The EPP would be pressing the Irish presidency to resolve the impasse on the constitution by the time of the June elections, Mr Martens said.

He defended a highly controversial draft resolution tabled by the EPP-ED Group which seeks to exclude leading former Communists from the former Soviet Union from the European institutions. "We in the EPP are opposed to extremes, be they on the left or on the right," he told journalists.

"This is the first time a political group expresses its clear rejection of left-wing extremists and totalitarian systems. Every democrat can accept that."