As the European Convention started its work again a few days ago, the French "friends of the Convention" (a working group within JE-France), also met on Monday night. At the entrance, we had (as every time) access to the latest documents published or received by the Convention's secretariat. Some of them were very interesting, especially the work of the secretariat trying to merge all the different positions already expressed in a Constitution with different options depending on who defended what. After getting a few general pieces of information on the activities of the different groups, our guest tonight, Mr. Pierre Moscovici, (representing the French national government, who was maintained in his position as a Convention member although he has different political views than our new government), expressed his ideas about Europe. In fact, he does not have a very precise vision, he is quite "open": he likes many ideas but does not convey the feeling of having a concrete vision...

Here are his main ideas, in a few words:

a) the CAP and other common politicies should be weakened in order to grant more resources to new priorities: Economic and social coordination, the international power and influence of the EU, the asylum, immigration and defence policies should be put in common... but giving the national governments the final power.

b) The institutional triangle should be maintained but reformed:
- The Commission should have a political weight, through a president representing the EP and chosen by the States;
- The voting mechanism should be the same through Europe: proportionnal and regionalised

- The Council of Ministers (and the Euro. Council) should stay equivalent to the Commission for Executive tasks, but the General Affairs Council should be split into two bodies, one effective international component, with a Minister of Foreign Affairs replacing Mr. Solana and Mr. Patten; and the other real General Affairs Council, with specialised ministers. He said, "There's no need to create a European senate, the Council is already one, but don't tell them...".

- There should be a President for Europe (a second one?) elected by the national governments... maybe there should be only one President.

- He talks about a new function that would stand on top of these two branches.

On the whole, Moscovic was quite confident that this Convention will succeed in achieving a Constitutional Treaty (but not a Constitution, because the EU is not a state), but only if there is a consensus, at least among the representatives of the national governments, in order to have a successful IGC.

He also stated that the European Socialist Party was preparing a draft Constitution for 3 October.

Finally, he drew our attention to the necessity of getting people involved in the debate and continuing our lobbying activities towards the new French government, to make them feel that there is a political issue here. He was pessimistic on the issue of a European referendum on a Constitution in France if there had been no debate before.

Jessica Pennet
jesspennet@hotmail.com