Brussels – 13 June 2003

You have in front of you the last briefing of an ordinary Convention session. The result of the three day Convention meeting was A EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION. Or, to be more realistic, the result is the proposal from the Convention to the IGC concerning the text of Part I and II of the Constitution. As a result of the Convention plenary, and especially the component meetings, there have been a small number of quite decisive changes to the Constitution.

Part III and IV will be debated on 4 July and finalized on 9-10 July, meaning after the European Council meeting in Thessaloniki. Two decisive issues – more qualified majority voting and the concrete procedures of the Foreign and Security Policy – can still be improved upon in these meetings.

The Procedure

The procedure in these last stages turned out to be crucial. Wednesday morning started with meetings of the different party families, which tried to find common positions on their priorities for last changes to the constitutional text. Afterwards, there were short meetings of the component parts (that is, the European Parliament delegation, the representatives of national parliaments, and the representatives of the governments all met separately). The European Commission members also met separately, although Barnier and Vitorino, who have no major problems agreeing, often looked rather bored waiting for the others to finish.

Between 3pm and 4pm there was a short Convention plenary, during which time Convention members wasted a great deal of time repeating their request to meet again in their components. Eventually they returned to the component meetings from 4pm until 5pm. The meeting of the national parliaments component was particularly interesting, as the majority of representatives confirmed the priorities agreed upon in the morning, despite objections from a minority of individuals. Another 20 minutes was “invested” in a discussion about whether to have a meeting between national and European parliamentarians or try to forge a stronger consensus among themselves. In the end, the common meeting of the two groups of parliamentarians did take place, which was closed to observers, assistants and media representatives, although this was more a question of space than of secrecy. At the end of the day there was a two-hour plenary debate where Convention members presented the views of the component groups.

The session on Thursday was similarly structured: the components met in the morning (including a short common meeting of the EP and national parliaments), then the Convention presidium held a very lively meeting between 3pm and 7pm during which time they managed to agree on incorporating several of the key demands arising from the components and the plenary discussions. The official part of the day ended with a plenary session during which time Convention members heavily criticized the changes that had been made to the preamble of the Charter on Fundamental Rights (see link to this document in this bulletin contribution “FINAL ARTICLES OF THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION – PART I AND PART II”) and the fact that several demands of a clear majority of Convention members had not been included. Although the plenary debate finished shortly before 9pm, unofficial meetings continued well into the night.

Friday morning began with meetings of the party families and of the components, and a final plenary beginning at 11am. Despite earlier attempts to change the text, by this stage most Convention members were willing to accept the overall shape of the final compromise. A small number of Convention members were heavily critical, but the overwhelming majority stressed that this was a strong compromise that virtually all representatives could live with. One Convention member referred to the final draft as “as basis for discussion for the IGC”, but the loud shouts from the rest of the Convention indicated the overall opposition to the IGC making substantive changes to the final text. Convention member after Convention member emphasised that the final text, being based on compromises from all sides, was the best result that it was possible to achieve. The ceremonious end of the Convention brought a standing ovation to the Constitution, followed by the European Anthem and glasses of champagne.

One of the most crucial meetings of the final stages was the one between the European and national parliamentarians. Together these represented 72 out of 105 full Convention members. There was a clear and strong majority of these members in favour of three key priorities (more details below) for changes of the Constitution by the presidium in their final negotiations on Part I and Part II. These points were also emphasized in the component meetings and communicated to President Giscard d’Estaing and the two Vice-Presidents, Dehaene and Amato, who took part in the three component meetings on Thursday.

The three priorities of this meeting were:

1. Voting procedures

One of the main demands was the extension of qualified majority voting to 'nearly' all areas of Union decision. Andrew Duff produced a list of all policies in which the Union (according to the current version of Part 3 of the Constitution) does not decide by qualified majority voting (QMV), including demands for QMV in most of these fields. Convention members were especially strongly asking for QMV decisions in foreign policy, if it does not involve military involvement. Some of these Convention members argued that if there will be unanimity decisions in CSFP, the Convention will have failed.

The presidium tried to offer a compromise on this issue with a so called "passarelle-clause" (first presented last Friday, now in Convention document 797/03 in Article 24 (3) - 24 (4)). This clause says more or less (some parts are quite unclear) that from 2009 on, the European Council can decide unanimously that an area of policy where unanimity is foreseen should in future be decided on according to the legislative procedure.

This is as complicated as it sounds. If all 25 voting members of the European Council agree from 2009 on that in a certain policy (e.g. CSFP) unanimity is no longer necessary, they can take a decision to make this the case. A proposal of the EP component on this issue is to change the date of 2009 and also to take the decision about unanimity with a superqualified majority (something like 5/6 of members and 2/3 of states in the European Council), so that individual member states cannot block the decision to give up unanimity.

Another strong demand of the national parliaments and the European Parliament was legislative decision-making should always take place in codecision with the European Parliament. This would mean that the Council could not take any legislative decisions on their own, without the EP agreeing.

In addition, both components asked for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be responsible for the entire Constitution and that all legislation should be subject to rulings by the ECJ. At the moment there are some policies from which judicial control by the ECJ is excluded.

2. Institutional balance

A second important issue for both components (national and European parliaments) was the institutional structure/balance. A broad majority of the Convention members disagreed with the proposal to strengthen the European Council and its President without strengthening the European Commission and its President.

This led to the demand for the European Parliament to have the right to add names to the list of possible Commissioners and to propose and elect the president of the European Commission. Both would strengthen the legitimacy and the role of the European Commission. In addition, they demanded that the President of the Commission should have the power to individually remove Commissioners, if there are sufficient reasons for this.

The parliamentarians also stressed that the General Affairs Council and the Legislative Council should not be mixed together. A broad majority of Convention members strongly supported a separate Legislative Council, in order clearly to separate the executive and legislative functions of the Council.

Another demand was that the decision about setting up additional Council formations should the responsibility of the General Affairs Council, not the European Council (as this would make the European Council too powerful).

3. People's initiative

A last demand which the Convention members put as their priority was the people's initiative, as a tool to involve the citizens of Europe in policy making. In this people's initiative, the Commission can be asked to initiate legislation or a legal act by a petition signed by one million European citizens from more than 8 states.

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