Dear Europeans,

In less than three months, the European Convention should present its final
proposal for a European Constitution. Although many articles have been
presented, many hot topics have not yet been tackled. The Presidium has
responded to the time pressure by scheduling more and more meetings, but also by bringing the drafting phase for the articles to an end. In the last
Convention session on 3-4 April, three new titles of the Constitution have
been presented: "The Union and its immediate environment"; "Participatory
democracy"; and the "General and Final provisions of the European
Constitution". As the Presidium was not able to agree on many of these
articles, they have simply put forward articles representing the status quo,
especially concerning the final provisions of the EU. The comments given by
the Presidium suggesting possible changes to the status quo will nevertheless
provide a lot of room for debate.

The two sets of articles which were presented in the previous meeting and
discussed on the 3rd and 4th of April also highlighted the continuance of
widely diverging views within the Convention. In particular, the draft
articles on the "Area of freedom, security and justice" provoked a
interesting situation: "Community Method-friendly" Germany demanded the
maintenance of unanimity on certain questions of asylum policy, while
the "intergovernmental" British asked for qualified majority voting on issues
linked to the "Area of freedom, security and justice". In the debate on the
Union's finances it was also obvious that finding agreement on all details of
the constitutional articles will be an extremly difficult job. We can only
hope that the absence of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing during the entire last
Convention meeting will not have any negative influence on the Convention’s
destiny.

Although the Presidium has still not presented any draft articles on the
future of the EU institutions, the debate on the question of who will
exercise power in the future EU has begun to gain a new momentum. This is
mainly due to the so-called "meetings of the dwarves". Sixteen small and
medium-sized member states met in Luxemburg at the beginning of April to
discuss the Union's institutions, and came to the conclusion that they are
strongly opposed to an elected and strong President of the European Council.
For some big member states this strong President of the European Council is a
crucial demand in the Convention debate. Germany is caught in the middle:
they have agreed to accept an elected President of the European Council if
the real and strong President of the EU will be the President of the
Commission. As you can see, the debate is still as diverse and complicated as
it has been for the past few years. However, the fact that 16 member states
and future member states have been able to find agreement on the result of
the "dwarves", and that this group calls itself a "friend of the Community
Method", gives us some hope that the debate will move in the right direction.
As well as the document of that meeting you will also find below an
interesting interview with the representative of the Maltese Government to
the Convention, Peter Serracino-Inglot.

As contributions in this bulletin you will also find a new open letter from
the Youth Contact Group, signed by the major European youth political
organisations. You will also find the resolutions and positions of JEF Europe
on the Convention, adopted at the last Federal Committee of the Young
European Federalists in Prague on 30 March.

If you would like to contribute to the next edition of the bulletin, send
your contribution to (deadline for the
27th issue is 22th April). As usual, you can read all articles of this
Bulletin in full length on the Constitutional Convention Homepage:

Best European greetings,

Jan Kreutz
Editor in chief.