Hereby I would like to give you a small briefing about the Convention meeting on the 24th and 25th of April. The information is based on several meetings I attended (Convention plenary, a press conference of Mendez de Vigo and Klaus Hänsch, the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, the delegation meetings of the EP and of the SPE-family, the Federalist Convention Intergroup) and on the rumours spread around inside and outside of the Convention.

The main proposals discussed in the days before and during the Convention meeting were proposals that only a handful of people have seen in their original format. A few days before the Convention meeting, Giscard shocked the Convention plenary, the Convention members and the European public with his ‘vision’ of the constitutional articles on institutions. It was no only the content of these articles – many claimed it was more intergovernmental than the results of an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) could have been - which was heavily critisized by basically every individual Convention member. Moreover it was the fact that even presidium members heard about these proposals first through the press and only then from Giscard, which made many Convention members furious and led to a crisis of trust between Giscard and the Convention members. Voices outside of the Convention and even some Convention members said the best solution for Giscard would for him to resign. Giscard did not pay any attention to these criticisms; he missed most of the Convention plenary on Thursday and Friday.

After the extremly pesimistic mood of many Convention members on Wednesday evening, things looked better the next morning. The Convention presidium had met for the whole of Tuesday until late at night and also on Wednesday until late. In these marathon meetings they slowly managed to weaken nearly all of the positions of VGE. On Thursday, at the start of the Convention meeting, the presidium was able to put forward draft institutional articles which were slightly more acceptable as a first starting point for discussion.

I briefly outline the content of the institutional articles and comments of Convention members on their content. As there has not been any official discussion within the Convention on the articles, I can only refer to comments made in informal meetings around the Convention. I will also try to indicate the changes the presidium – and here it was especially Inigo Mendez de Vigo who was one of the strongest allies of the federalists – made to Giscard’s worst case scenario.

Art. 14: THE UNION INSTITUTIONS
This article stresses that the Union has a single institutionl framework and defines the aims of the latter. In the then following list of the institutions, VGE saw the European Council as the first and most important institution. This is especially remarkable since in the current treaties this body is not even listed as one of the regular institutions. The presidium managed to correct this passage and now the European Parliament – as a representative of the Union citizens – is listed first place.

Art. 15: THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
In three short paragraphs the presidium listed in this article some of the roles of the European Parliament. The main success of the presidium in this article was to overcome some of the shortcomings of Nice, by including the phrase “representation […] shall be degressively proportional, with a minimum treshold of four members per member state” (which makes the allocation of EP seats more understandable and from the point of view of many EP members also more fair). Further this article restricts the number of the members of the EP to 700.
EP members of the Convention especially criticised the lack of clarification of the role of the Parliament, no reference to the budgetary powers of the Parliament and the fact that in the draft articles the European Parliament is no longer the representation of the Union citizens.

Art. 16 and 16a: THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL and THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL CHAIR
It is remarking, that the article about the chair of the European Council is longer than the article about the European Council itself. VGE’s original proposals were not only extremly complicated and confusing but also extremly undemocratic and unfair for the smaller states. He has foreseen a long term, fulltime president (although a broad majority of the Convention members were against this proposal) which would be supported by eight Vice-Presidents – including a first Vice-President - of which only one had to be from a smaller member state. He saw this European Council as a Union ‘superpower’ which had even more legislative and executive rights as today’s European Council.
The proposal of the presidium – which is the one put forward to the Convention members – does not talk about a president, but a chair of the European Council (nevertheless, in Giscard’s mother tongue – French – there is only one translation for both words). On the question whether this chair would be a full time chair, Mendez de Vigo answered that he could not be a Prime Minister of a member state and the chair of the European Council at the same time, which makes it basically a full time chair (an idea rejected by most Convention members). Many Convention members critisized the fact that the ‘chair’ looks really similar to the ‘president’ they did not want in the first place and that there is no democratic control of the European Council, except for a report the chair has to give quarterly to the EP.

Art. 17 and 17 a: THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS and COUNCIL FORMATIONS
These two articles forsee the Council as co-legislator who enacts legislation, carries out policy-making and co-ordinates. The five council formations foreseen are: ‘Genreal Affairs Council’, ‘Legislative Council’, ‘Foreign Affairs Council’, ‘Economic and Financial Affairs Council’ and “Council on Justice and Security’.
Considering the fact that the main function of the Council(s) of Ministers is/are to co-legislate, some Convention members wondered what the different roles for the ‘Legislative Council’, the ‘General Affairs Council’ and the other Councils are.

Art. 17b: QUALIFIED MAJORITY
This article defines that the qualified majority consists of a majority of states, representing three fifth of the Union’s population. Especially considering a complicated tripple majority which is foreseen in the Nice Treaty, this is a big step forward.

Art. 18 and 18a: THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION and THE PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
The presidiums proposal stresses that the “European Commission shall safeguard the general European interest”, a reference which VGE either forgot in his proposal, or did not include on purpose.
The two main questions about the Commission were: “who elects it?” and “how many members does it havein the future?”.

The presidium again managed to correct Giscards proposals partly – which has foreseen an election of the Commission President through the European Council. Now the draft provides for the European Council, while taking into consideration the results of the EP elections, to propose a candidate, which the EP can by simple majority either elect or reject. Although this proposal is a huge improovement towards Giscards visions, some Convention members were still quite unsatisfied and proposed to have a common body between the EP and the European Council to choose appropriate candidates for the President of the European Commission.

In the current draft article on the Commission, the Commission President has after her/his election the power to choose up to 13 Commissioners out of candidates, the member states have put forward. So far the small member states insisted on having one Commissioner each. Nevertheless this proposal might be an acceptable compromise in the end, since it will only be valid for the year 2009. In 2004 the Nice Treaty will aplly, which means every country will get one Commissioner each for one Commission term.

Additionally to the President and up to 13 other Commissioners, the draft article foresees a Vice-President of the Commission which is also the Foreign Minister of the Union and part of the Council and the Commission.
The presidium further disagreed with Giscard’s idea to make the Commission responsible to the European Council. In the current draft, the European Commission is only responsible to the European Parliament.

After this longer analysis of Giscard’s and the presidium’s proposals for the institutional articles (keep in mind that only the presidiums proposals are relevant for the Convention debate) we must say that the presidiums proposals are much better than Giscard’s. Nevertheless we must keep in mind that Giscards tactics worked: he proposed articles which were so intergovernmental and undemocratic that a compromise between him and the presidium brings us only back to the point of discussion where we were one week ago. It is obvious that we are still far away from institutional articles which really arrive to a more understandable and more democratic Union. In the current draft, many aspects of the Union institutions are still strongly intergovernmental and the Convention members still have to do a lot of work before they arrive to a “nearly federal constitution”.

Besides presenting the new articles on institutions and on defence policy (which I will not analyse in this briefing, you can find the articles in the Convention Bulletin) there were also four sets of partly quite important articles discussed by the Convention members.

Title VI: THE DEMOCRATIC LIFE OF THE UNION
Although there was a rather long debate about these articles, there were only a few controvercial issues. Several Convention members were of the opinion that some articles, such as Art.35 “The European Ombudsman”, Art.36 “Transparency of the Union’s proceedings” and Art.36a “Protection of personal data” were either already part of the Fundamental Rights Charter or other articles of the Constitution and should therefore be deleted.
Many Convention members stressed that the Art.37 “Status of churches and non-confessional orgnisations” is extremly important and should be kept. Concerning the Art.35a “Political parties” there was the opinion that a reference to party internal democracy was missing as well as the rule that nominations for political positions in the European Union must be based on democratic elections within the parties.
There were also a lot of Convention members which stressed that there needs to be a reference to the role of the social partners and the social dialogue and that the cooperation with NGOs has to be included as a decisive part of the “Democratic life of the Union”.

Title IX: THE UNION AND ITS IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT
There was not a lot of substantial discussion on this title. Some members were of the opinion that this article could be part of the articles on “Foreign and Security Policy” and belongs into the second part of the Constitution. Some other members stressed that the Union should not only have a special relation to its geographic neighbours, but to all countries which are cultural and political close to the Union. Other than that there seemed to be a broad agreement on the proposed articles of the presidium.

Title X: UNION MEMBERSHIP
This title, linked to the articles on the ratification and revision of the Constitution as well as the articles on the institutions will be the most important articles and their content will decide whether we arrive to a true European democracy or whether we will stick to some intergovernmental elements, characteristic for international organisations.
The article which attracted most attention was Art.46 “Voluntary withdrawal from the Union” – refered to as the “exit clause”. A broad majority of the Convention members were in favour of this clause. Many argued, the Union citizens have to see that the EU is not a prison and that everyone should have the right to leave. Other Convention members, for example Jürgen Meyer, argued that this article would offer the Eurosceptics the possibility to campaign for leaving the Union.
Amato, who chaired the meeting as VGE was absent the entire Friday, stressed that it is important to show that the Union is not a normal international Organisation but a constitutional community. He stressed that therefore it is not enough to apply the rules of the Vienna Convention (which defines the rules for leaving international treaties) but it is crucial to apply constitutional rules in the event of a member state wishing to leave the Union.
The broad majority of the Convention agreed that leaving the Union can only happen after negotiations between the Union (or their member states) and the state wishing to leave (according to the Vienna Convention signatories of the treaty could leave unilateral). They also stressed that it has to be clear to everyone, that leaving the Union leads to extremly high economic, political and social costs.

Part IV: GENERAL AND FINAL PROVISIONS
Under this title there were especially two issues discussed: ratification and revision of the Constitution.
Concerning the ratification there were some members that proposed to the Convention to come up with a rule that the draft constitution has to be submited to the people in form of a referendum, before the IGC would decide about the final result. Another proposal – which received a lot more support – was to have on the same day binding or at least consultative referenda in all countries where this is possible, after the IGC has come up with their result.
More controvercial was the question, whether for the ratification of the constitution and for the ratification of revisions four fifth majority of the member states would be enough or whether it needed unanimity. Although British representatives insisted on ratification procedures based on unanimity, a majority of the Convention members was ready to give up the unanimity procedure for the ratification.
A majority also agreed that for revisions of the first and second part (Fundamental Rights Charter) of the constitution and for some aspects of the third part (Union policies) a Convention had to prepare the constitutional changes. One member of the Convention proposed to put forward the result of this Convention to ratification directly, without consulting an IGC.
Another difficult issue which had to be solved is the question on whether countries not ratifying the constitution and the revised constitution will have to leave the Union. A majority of the Convention members – keeping in mind that some government representatives were of the opposite opinion – agreed that there should be a link between not ratifying the constitution and the exit clause, while ensuring two years of negotiation period before the exit clause will automatically come into affect.

All in all we can surely conclude that the debate about the institutions and therefore about the real powers in the Union has started. The timetable will be extremly tight, especially considering that in some of the issues, compromises are still very far away.

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