Dear Europeans,

With less than three weeks left to conclude their work, the Convention
members are making small and slow steps forward towards the conclusion of
their work. The previous Convention session allowed a lot of time for
discussing the draft articles on institutions and on the external action of
the Union. Nevertheless we saw more of an exchange of arguments than a real
desire to find a compromise which would please a large majority of the
Convention members. Only the Benelux proposal offered some hope that the
Convention will be able to find a compromise on institutions. More on this
proposal can be found in the summary of the Convention session, included in
this bulletin. The alternative to agreeing on a common text for the
Constitution is to leave several issues open for the Intergovernmental
Conference (IGC). For most representatives of civil society and for most
politicians in Europe, this would be an unacceptable solution.

The work of the Presidium makes it even harder to stick to the timetable. It
failed to hand over a completely revised version of the draft Constitution,
because the members of the Presidium were not able to agree on new draft
articles on the institutions. In addition, many of the draft articles
presented on Monday were again going against the majority opinion of the
Convention, such as removing any reference to the word federal. JEF has
issued a press release rejecting this proposal, which can be found in this
bulletin.

Civil society organisations have been working very hard in these last weeks
to make their own contributions. This bulletin includes a wide range of
opinions from youth organisations, intergroups on the Convention and other
networks. This includes the results from the follow up meeting of the
European Youth Convention, held 20-21 May, which brought together many youth
representatives from all over Europe, and which produced a strong result
repeating many of the central demands from the first meeting of the Youth
Convention in July last year. We include the final result of this meeting,
along with some press coverage, as well as some results from national Youth
Conventions from around Europe.

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 30th
issue is 3 June). 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,
Editor in chief.