16th April 2003

Following I would like to give you a short briefing of the results of the informal European Council meeting concerning the European Convention.

The (grand)farther of the Convention, Valery Giscars d'Estaing, was invited to give a report and speak about the Convention itself. Nevertheless it was obvious that VGE went much further than reporting: he openly discussed with the Heads of state and government about the future work of the Convention, especially concerning the institutions, and asked for their advice and their opinions.

This discussion surely contributed to making the debates in the IGC following the Convention much easier. Nevertheless I see it as a dangerous sign that VGE seems to be more interested in the opinion of the heads of states and governments on the institutional issues, than he is interested in the opinion of the Convention members. The Convention members still did not have the time to discuss institutional matters in the Convention, as VGE previously postponed putting forward the respective draft constitutional articles. Some Convention members have the fear that there will not be enough time to discuss institutional issues in debth and a compromise had to be found in the IGC.

The issues VGE talked about in his press conference were the following:

CHARTER: VGE said that the Charter will have constitutional status and will form the second part of the Constitution. This is maybe not surprising - as it has ever been Giscard's position - but considering that the majority of the Convention wants to see the Charter in a prominent role in the first part of the Constitution (not somewhere in the second part or as an Annex) it shows that VGE does “not always” agree with the majority opinion of the Convention.

EUROPEAN COUNCIL: VGE sees the European Council giving the guidance for the CSFP policy and for the renovation of the institutions. The later formulation is rather new and it shows, that VGE might be in favour of the European Council making constitutional changes, instead of another Convention or partly the Parliament and the Council in codecision.
Not surprisingly there was no agreement on the question, whether there should be an elected head of the European Council or whether the rotation should be kept. On the question whether it is true that a broad majority of the EU member states supports the rotation, VGE answered that in a democracy not all member states can be considered as equal. He said that some member states have a much bigger population than the others and that the population of those member states supporting an elected president of the European Council is bigger than the population of those states supporting the rotation. Firstly I am sure that this opinion is not shared by most of the member states and secondly this shows that there will be a major disagreement of big and small states on the institutional questions.

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT / EUROPEAN COMMISSION: When talking about the institutions, VGE did not mention the EP or the Commission at all. The only reference on this issue was done by Prodi, saying that there was a broad agreement of the heads of states and governments to strengthen the community method and to strengthen the Commission and the EP. This again shows that VGE does not attach a great importance to the EP and still sees the European Council as the most important body in the EU, which again is nothing new to us.

CSFP: Simitis (representing the Greek presidency) spoke of unanimity in the demand to have a minister for foreign policy uniting today's positions of Solana and Pattern. This is nothing new and since there was no more detailed information on that topic, there seems to be no agreement on who should elect this minister and whom he would be accountable to.

EQUALITY OF RIGHTS: After talking about new names for the Union and a Congress of the people, Giscard seems to have found another topic he thinks the Union citizens care about. He spent several minutes on explaining, that he wants something in the Constitution enshrining the quality of rights of the Union citizens. Neither did he give a more concrete explanation of that idea, nor could he explain what the purpose of the Charter is, if not guaranteeing the quality of the rights of the citizens.

TIMETABLE: After long discussions about the timetable, it seems to be clear now that there will be no extension of the timetable. VGE will put forward a "draft treaty for the European Constitution" on the 20th of June, at the European Council meeting in Thessaloniki. This means that there will be an enormous pressure on the Convention members to finish in time. We have to see, whether that is a negative decision and will result in a poorer outcome of the Convention or whether it will be positive in the end and force the Convention to come to some kind of agreement.

By: Jan Kreutz,Vice-President JEF-Europe
Contact: jan.kreutz@jef-europe.net