We entered a new decade in European history. On the 28th of February – with the optimistic words: “Vive l’Europe” – Mr. Giscard d’Estaing opened the first meeting of the convention. Giscard and the other convention members had one thing in common: they feel the importance to achieve a positive result at the end of the convention.

Besides the need for democratic reforms, many politicians underlined the necessity to involve the civil society and the public in their discussions. Mr Giscard d’Estaing as well as Mr. Dehaene emphasised the need to involve young people, and they also mentioned a special Youth Convention supposed to be established in the months to come. The Youth-Platform for the Convention, including EYF, JEF, ECOSY, YEPP, LYMEC, FYEG, and many others will get in contact with the presidium and the secretariat of the convention in order to investigate our possibilities to be involved in this Forum.

"We have to give ourselves a Constitution, which marks the birth of Europe as a political entity.(...) A European democracy based on the peoples and the States of Europe. To do so, we have to adapt the major principles underlying our national democratic traditions to the unique structure of Europe. These are: the separation of powers; majority voting; public debate and a vote by the people's elected representatives on all legal texts; approval of taxes by Parliament."

Romano Prodi, President of the European commission, Opening session of the Convention on the future of the EU, Brussels, 28 February 2002.

1. What are your opinions of the Convention process?

The Convention has a unique chance, not only to push forward a substantial reform of the treaties in the direction of a Constitution, but also to change the methods and instruments of treaty changes. For the first time national parliamentarians and European parliamentarians are involved in the preparation of the reform of an international treaty, and if the Convention succeeds, this will be the first step from intergovernmentalism in reforming the treaties to the Community method. This is of strategical importance. There has been a lot of reluctance, hesitation, even enmity, against the Convention, between governments but also in some national parliaments. The Convention will only have one chance, because if it fails, there will be never again be a new Convention for treaty changes. That is why we must not fail.

2. What in that case would you see as a success or failure?

It would be a failure if the Convention in the end comes only to some vague recommendations; it would be a failure if the Convention is satisfied with proposing some amendments to the Nice treaty. It would be a failure if the Convention in the end proposes three or four alternative options.

It would be a success if the Convention proposes even a limited, but a substantial, draft for a new treaty by a large consensus, not necessarily by unanimity. It is only by this large consensus that it will have a political impact on what the governments will have to decide in the intergovernmental conference.

1.What are your expectations for the Convention?

The Convention probably offers the last chance to shape a European Union capable of development and decision making. Simultaneously the opportunity is presented to us even more strongly to lead the discussion over the Future of the European Union not behind closed doors under secrecy but openly developing a solution in a democratically legitimate procedure. We must work towards achieving a result which allows the citizen to know who is responsible for what in Europe and who she or he can hold accountable in the eventuality of wrong decisions or negative developments. This includes an individually binding Charter of Fundamental Rights available to the citizen to protect himself against injustice. Moreover, it must arrive at the removal of the right of veto and the strengthening of the European Parliament.

2. How do you see the role of representatives of the European Parliament in the Convention?

The members of European Parliament are statistically the strongest group within the Convention. Together with the 30 national parliamentarians from the member states we build a clear majority of directly elected representatives. Therefore our priority should lie with improving the democratic legitimacy and transparency of the Union and its institutions as the heads of State and Government declared as their goal in Nice in 2000. Simultaneously a specific responsibility rests with us regarding the resolution of compromises especially when there are different interests between Government representatives. From all the Convention members the members of European Parliament will have the greatest experience of solving conflicts and differences of opinion on a European level to reach acceptable solutions.

“Vive L’Europe” – These were the closing words of Giscard d’Estaing’s opening speech. And he was not the only person that was positive concerning the convention. Both the presidium and the convention members were fully aware that this was a very special day. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and many others mentioned the historical example for this new European institution: The Philadelphia convention.

Underlining the great impact of the European Parliament on the creation of the convention, new elected EP-President Pat Cox made his contribution in stressing the importance of the convention. In his eyes, the convention marks a revolutionary step forward by changing the integration method.

In order to bring a youth perspective to the debate on Europe’s future, a group of Youth Forum Member Organisations, including the youth organisations of the main European parties, has set up a Contact Group and hopes to establish a close working relationship with the Convention.

The Contact Group has been initiated by the European Community Organisation of Socialist Youth (ECOSY), European Trade Union Confederation Youth (ETUC Youth), Federation of the Young European Greens (FYEG), Young European Federalists (JEF), Liberal and Radical Youth Movement of the European Union (LYMEC), Youth of the European People’s Party (YEPP).

It will be open to all youth organisations

Marianne Bonnard
marianne.bonnard@jef-europe.net

Hope not for federal redemption - Brussels is not Philadelphia

The start of the EU-convention has been accompanied by a monumental display of federalist rhetoric. According to this, the Brussels congress finds its historical equal in the Philadelphia Convention which gave birth to the US constitution more than 200 years ago. This is no light comparison. The US constitution was born out of a fundamental philosophical reflection on human freedom, it marked the closing stone of a successful revolution and set the path for the coming of the American empire. Apparently, none of this holds for today’s Europe.

Maybe the greatest invention of the Philadelphia convention was the convention itself. This is a device for “legalizing” revolution. Its mission was to make the revolutionary achievement of freedom a common and lasting good. If constitutions live up to this idea, they embody a new vision of individual and collective freedom. The drafting of a constitution is thus a critical and decisive moment in the history of human freedom as Hannah Arendt clearly saw.

Even if the Brussels convention were to debate about more than a reform of institutions already in existence, what would be Europe’s common vision of free government? Is there any? „Europe is weary“, Tocqueville concluded already in the 1830s. For Nietzsche at the dawn of the last century, „Europe is sick“. After two world wars (if you count the cold war, three), the malaise continues. Europe still lives under the specter of its last political invention – the absolutist nation state and its corollary, the Rechtsstaat. This paternalistic attitude has been continued on to the modern welfare state. All differences between Europe’s nation states notwithstanding, the state in Europe is a sacrosanct institution. And its logic is deeply ingrained in those who convene in Brussels to build a European state. The convention‘s president, Giscard, comes from a country, where an all-encompassing, doctrinaire state has been built around the ruins of a revolutionary legacy. His co-delegates, with a few exceptions, are rather elderly men who spent their political lives as social or christian democrats, administering the rise and fall of the continental welfare state. Their prime goal is not to build a new Union but to administer the unaffordable competences of the nation-state on a new, European level. In this sense, the Brussels bureaucracy is the advent of a new state machine and of a new mould that sacrifices diversity for conformity.

For years on, the European political leaders have announced that the Enlargement of the EU was about to happen. The moment is arrived now; the deadline of 2004 is fixed.

Europe is arriving close to the last stop before deciding its final destination. In other words, it’s time to discuss Europe’s future, objectives, competencies and capacities in order to welcome the new member states in the EU. Afterwards, it will still be possible to deepen the European integration curse but we all know that it would required a political will that we could doubt to be reached. Therefore, we can only welcome the decision of establishing a Convention in order to prepare the next Intergovernmental Conference and the next Treaty reform.

The model of the Convention has the advantage of opening the space for a public debate. It would not have been possible to engage a debate about Europe’s future without involving the public opinion. The Convention has not only the task of proposing a document to the Heads of States for the next IGC, but to launch the debate and to make the discussion lively.

The Grüne Jugend welcomes the Constitutional Convention as a big step
towards a more integrated EU with democratic and transparent structures. We
notice positively, that the Convention publicly meets and discusses and also
that the European Parliament as well as national Parliaments and applicant
countries take an active part. On the other hand we criticize that women are
underrepresented (17 women are among 105 members) as well as young people
and that the German members (e.g. Erwin Teufel) are unfortunately no real experts on
European policy.

The Young Socialists Germany (Jusos) hope that the European Convention will deliver a genuine reform of the Union and elaborates a federal Constitution which can bring more democracy, efficiency and accountability for the whole of Europe. The European Union is much more than a single market and a monetary union. It has also a political and social dimension. Therefore is a need for a common employment, foreign, security and defence, immigration and environment policy on the european level.

The Jusos Germany are supporting the "Federalist Voice: Network for a European Constitution" which has been established in Brussels on Saturday, 24 February, by the "European Constitution" Intergroup within the European Parliament, the European Ligue for Economic Cooperation (ELEC), the European Young Socialists (ECOSY), the Gauche européenne, the International European Movement, the Liberal and Radical Youth Movement of the European Union (LYMEC), the Réalités Européennes du Présent, the Union of European Federalists (U.E.F.) and the Young European Federalists (JEF).

The method of gradual reforms has reached an end. A lack of transparency in the methods and false compromises with results, that are not understandable, have led to a growing suspicion and decreasing acceptance of European integration. Today European Union has reached the borders of its capacity. The enlargement with the central and eastern European states creates additional challenges on the unity of the Union and the functioning of its institutions. Deeper reforms are needed to ensure that Europe will become not only more efficient but also more democratic and transparent in the future.

The European constitutional treaty shall comprise the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the allocation of competencies between the Union and the member states as well as the institutional design. For us there exits no opposition between Europe and nation. If the nation states are not capable to deal with problems in the main policy-fields on their own, only one consequence is possible. Peace, exterior and interior security, wealth and growth in a globalised world are important tasks, for which the national states have become to small. Therefore the re-gain of capacity of action in essential parts of politics is needed.

The fact, that policy areas decided on the European level must not lead to a loss of democracy and transparency, as they would be decided on the national level. Therefore decision making on the European level has to be as democratic legitimised as in the nation states. Thus, Junge Union favours a fundamental reform of the institutions the in the framework of the constitutional treaty. The enlargement of the Union accentuates this necessity.

The Convent for a European constitution should make the first steps to establish a more solid an institutional cooperation between the states in Europe. This cooperation would be based on more formal and legally binding rules. This convent was established by the European Council in 2000. The main topic should be regulation of the nowadays European legislative rules. In the same development we should emphasize the transformation from the federation of states to one common federal state.

- The European Council has established a catalogue of basic laws at the assembly in the year 2000. This should be mandatory for all state activities. Furthermore they have to establish only one book as a clear summary which can be understood not only by lawyers but also by most of the citizens.