Dear Europeans,

Although we know that to most of you, the situation in Iraq is more important than the Convention, we would like to present to you the next edition of the Constitutional Convention Bulletin. We believe that at a time where international diplomacy has failed once again, it is even more important to work on a project overcoming national divisions and creating a supranational democracy. The Convention members seem to be of the same opinion and do everything other than slowing down the constitutional train.

During the last Convention session, the articles on “Implementing Union action” and the two protocols on “- the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality” and on “- the role of national parliaments in the European Union” have been discussed. There was rather wide disagreement between the Convention members on the questions of which procedures and which majorities should be applied to different Union competences. Therefore the session could be seen as a first exercise for the discussion on the institutions - the discussion about who will get the power in the European Union.

The concrete discussions on the draft articles will now enter into a new phase. The presidium did not only present articles for the first part of the Constitution – articles on finances and the area of freedom, security and justice – but it also presented articles for the second part of the Constitution (again on the area of freedom, security and justice). Further it presented two massive volumes of documents consisting of the first proposals for the entire second part of the Constitution, which can be seen as a first report from the work of the external experts.

During the next meeting on 3 – 4 April, the presidium will finally put forward some first articles on the “Union institutions”. We expect a controversial and long debate on these articles and JEF as well as other youth organisations will contribute with their own ideas on these institutional questions.
Although the pace of the Convention work has accelerated, the last days of June are coming closer every day. Especially considering the large ammount of amendments from the Convention members on most of the articles, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing faces the question of whether it will be possible and useful to stick to the Laeken timetable. So far he has not answered these questions from the Convention members, but the future timetable will be an issue that the Convention will continue to discuss in the coming weeks.

Trying to pick the most important contributions to the many debates within the Convention, we tried to give you a rough overview of the Convention process. This Bulletin also includes an interview with Josef Zieleniec, Czech Convention member. Further we publish some interesting contributions from youth organisations and civil society, such as the Berlin appeal to the Convention.

If you would like to contribute to the next edition of the bulletin, send your contribution to mailto:convention@jef-europe.net (deadline for the 26th issue is 8 April). As usual, you can read all articles of this Bulletin in full length on the Constitutional Convention Homepage: http://www.constitutional-convention.net.

Best European greetings,

Your Editors

Contact:
Jan Kreutz, Editor,
mailto:jan.kreutz@jef-europe.net