(EU) EU/CONVENTION/NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS: majority of Convention members remain opposed to creation of a congress

Brussels, 29/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The report by the Convention working group on the role of national parliaments (see EUROPE of 26 October, p.9) chaired by Britain's Gisela Stuart was very well received by members of the Convention who all wanted more involvement of national parliaments in the European integration process. The debate, however, highlighted their opposition, or at least that of a great majority of them, to the creation of a Congress bringing together representatives from national parliaments and the European Parliament.

Swedish parliamentarian Soren Lekberg said he was sceptical of the idea and considered that participation of parliaments in the work of COSAC and the Convention sufficed. Commissioner Michel Barnier was in favour of "meetings" between parliaments but against the creation of a new institution. This reluctance regarding the setting up of an additional institution at a time when the Convention must fulfil a mission of simplification was also expressed by the representative of the Bundestag, Jurgen Meyer, Austrian parliamentarian Caspar Einem, Dutch parliamentarian Frans Timmermans and the representative of the Irish Parliament Proinsias De Rossa, who said that the Union had no need of a new "word-mill".
Austrian Green Johannes Voggenhuber MEP spoke of a "baroque idea that it would be better to bury", as it aims especially to enhance the influence of governments, notably by drawing the attention of national parliaments away from their task of controlling the actions of their executives within the Council. German Christian-Democrat Elmar Brok MEP considered that such a device would make of the European Council and Congress the heads of the institutional edifice, weakening the European Parliament and Commission.
Dutch Christian-Democrat Hanja Maij-Weggen MEP said that only two members of the working group had spoken out in favour of this idea by Giscard d'Estaing. While stressing her personal opposition to the creation of a new institution, she proposed anchoring the Convention in the new treaty, for future reviews of the constitutional treaty, and renaming it "Congress". Thus, she explained, "Giscard d'Estaing's baby" will not be entirely destroyed, even if "in the end, it's no longer a girl but a boy".

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini spoke out in favour of more involvement of national parliaments but he too considered that a Congress would end up by making the institutional context even more complex. Such a Congress, he said, could only have a political nature and not institutional. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who has just joined the Convention, considered that such a Congress would only make sense if it improved democratic control and was not simply given a purely formal role. For him, however, there is no question of weakening the European Parliament or of handing such a Congress any kind of role in appointing the president of the Commission, role, he said, that belonged to the EP. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz found the idea interesting, but on condition that it did not alter the institutional balance.

French Convention members come to the rescue of Giscard's idea

While acknowledging that they had to avoid creating another chamber, the representative of the French government, Pierre Moscovici spoke of an "idea worth looking at", seeing in the Congress a "forum for dialogue" between national parliaments and the EP that could meet once a year (or more), notably to have a debate on the state of the Union. It would have no legislative powers and could not adopt resolutions but could intervene in the ratification procedure for reviews of the constitutional treaty (concerning the second part).
The French deputy and senator Pierre Lequiller and Hubert Haenel defended the same stance. William Abitbol MEP (EDD) declared himself to be "frankly disappointed with the timidity of the proposals of the working group", and presented the Congress as an ideal formula to ensure "osmosis" between national and European political life. This Congress could, he said, bring together all the parliamentarians of Europe (some 15,000, he suggested) into a "broad electoral college" responsible for ratifying the appointments of senior leaders in the EU. He explained that it would in fact be a question of a meeting of all parliamentary bodies at the same time, and there would have to be an immense stadium to host all these parliamentarians.

Giscard d'Estaing calls on Convention to be more imaginative

Concluding the debate, Valery Giscard d'Estaing welcomed the consensus reached on more involvement of national parliaments, especially through controls placed on governments within the Council and their participation in the control of the respect of subsidiarity. According to him, several proposals of the working group (enshrining the Convention method in the treaty, setting up of a network of Union parliaments and creation of a European week) went along the same lines as the Congress that would offer Europe what Convention members were precisely in the process of assessing: separation between the European Parliament and national parliaments.
VGE considrs that in future the Union will need a "broader representative structure" for subjects such as evolution of competencies or future enlargements. He then called on the Convention to be "imaginative" and not limit itself to simplifying existing provisions. The debate is currently too marked by doctrinaire stances, VGE considered, recalling that the Convention would anyway have to return to the issue in the spring.

Source: Agence Europe, 30.11.2002, www.agenceurope.com.