I would like to give you a briefing from the European Council meeting in Porto Carras, close to Thessaloniki. At one of the nicest beaches in Greece, far away from civilisation – in order to keep demonstrators out – the heads of state and government have discussed three main issues: the European Constitution, the Western Balkans; and asylum und immigration. Here I will only focus on the first aspect. As expected, the politicians did not come up with any surprising positions, but the decision was nevertheless quite important: The result of the Convention has been welcomed and approved as the basis for discussion in the IGC.

The entire European Council conclusion on the Constitution can be found in this bulletin.

1. THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

The heads of state and government this weekend have “expressed their gratitude” to VGE and to the members of the Convention for their work on the Constitution. The draft Presidency Conclusions stated that “the text of the Draft Constitutional Treaty is a good basis for starting in the Intergovernmental Conference”. This is a formulation which does not really reveal much about whether the governments intend to change the txt or leave it essentially unchanged. It is remarkable, however, that the “Draft Conclusions of the Presidency”, including the above mentioned formulation, was available a long time before the meeting between VGE and the governments ended, and remained unchanged. This means that there cannot have been much major disagreement on the constitutional text, as it has been expected.

Costas Simitis, Romano Prodi and VGE spoke in their common press conference of some necessary corrections to the proposed text, but stressed that the agreement will not be reopened issue by issue. Nevertheless Simitis did not say whether the heads of government had already highlighted the issues they want to “correct”. Prodi pointed out that the result of the Convention is an “extremely sufficient outcome” and he was much less critical than he had been before the final changes to Part I of the Constitution. Nevertheless he stressed that the text still does not propose the full implementation of qualified majority voting in issues such as economic cooperation and foreign and security policy. His statement - that it is up to the IGC to deal with these issues - shows that Prodi is not calling on the European Council to leave the result unchanged, but to make certain improvements to the text.

The European Council also set quite a concrete timetable for the IGC process. The meeting will now be convened in October 2003, and should be finished as quickly as possible. Commission representatives suggested that this could even be before the end of 2003. The draft Conclusions emphasise that the IGC should be completed no later than June 2004, so that the results can be presented to the citizens before the European Parliament elections. The Constitutional Treaty will be signed after 1 May 2004 so that the new members of the Union will be able to sign as full members.

While Costas Simitis promised that the European Parliament will be closely informed about the progress of the IGC, it was also made clear at the press conference that no role is envisaged for representatives of the Convention in the IGC. The Convention’s work will therefore be finished once it has completed Part III of the Constitution, which should be no later than 15 July. A representative of the Commission spoke about the need for the Convention to make “substantial changes” to Part III, Simitis and the Presidency Conclusions mentioned only “technical changes”. What the real task will be for the Convention regarding Part III in the next weeks will depend to a large extent on VGE’s own interpretation.

The public debate on the Future of Europe was also raised by Simitis. He stressed that this debate should not now end but that it would be even more important now that the Constitution has been written. Simitis placed strong emphasis on the need for the result of the Constitution to be communicated to the citizens. In this spirit, he called for the IGC to be as open and public as the Convention has been. Let us hope that the good example of the Convention will also help to change the nature of the closed-door IGCs.

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