Dear Europeans,

As expected after the last meetings the Constitutional-Convention is now
rapidly moving from tackling solely technicalities to dealing with the crucial
institutional debate. The Presidium has issued a discussion paper on the
question of competences, the core question in the current Future of Europe
debate. In this paper as well as during the latest Convention sessions more
and more important players are speaking up for a radical institutional reform
calling for a democratic Europe based on a federal constitutional system.
In this Bulletin you will therefore find a variety of articles and comments on
this debate.

At the same time the dialogue with civil society is getting more and
more concrete. Various Convention Members as well as European and National
institutions have understood that European citizens have to play a major role in
this debate if the Convention is to bring our
Union back to its people. The Economic and Social Committee is taking a
leading role in this aspect, inviting NGOs to regular meetings. This is why
we are especially happy to offer you an interview with Anne-Marie Sigmund,
Chair of Group 3 in the Economic and Social Council and Observer at the
Convention. In her comments on the Convention she tackles many general
issues about NGO involvement in the Convention, which should be urgently
considered, both by the Convention Presidium as well as by representatives
of the Civil Society.

A typical example for a rather unfortunate approach to the Civil Society contact
was the Presidium's proposal to set up 7 sectoral NGO contact groups dealing
with various policy issues. Nothwithstanding this effort at dialogue with
Civil Society, the core question of this Convention, the debate about the
institutional future of Europe has been completely ignored so far. The
proposed structure of the contact groups mean there is a danger that the NGOs
and some Convention members discuss policy issues such as culture or human
rights, and consider such a discussion as satisfying enough to cover the
civil society aspect of the debate. The decisions to be taken in these
months are completely different though. This Convention has to result
in a democratic Europe that gives legitimate space to NGO participation in
the political debate before the policy discussion can actually start.

Only after heavy criticism by various NGOs such as the "Federalist Voice"
network and the personal efforts of Jean-Luc Deheane, Vice-President
responsible for civil society, an additional group has been set up on the
issues of Citizenship and Institutions, issues which are crucial for
European Democracy and truly correspond with the issues of the Convention.
This 8th contact group to prepare the hearings gives finally NGOs their well
deserved weight in the institutional debate.

Finally as we would like to give the floor to different sectoral NGOs in
this Bulletin, we are happy to present various contributions from gender
equality organisaitons which do not only tackle the questionable
representation of women in this Convention, but also the general issue of
equality in the future Union.

The next edition of the bulletin will be focusing on the need for a European
Constitution. As always you are very much invited to send us contributions
for this issue to info@constitutional-convention.net (deadline for the 9th issue is
10th June). As usual, you can see all articles of this Bulletin in full length on the Constitutional Convention Homepage:
http://www.constitutional-convention.net/ .
If you wish to comment on any articles,feel free to do so in our online-discussion-forum:
http://www.constitutional-convention.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi

Best European greetings,

Your Editors.