Dear Europeans,

With today’s session the convention will slowly but clearly move towards producing its first results. After weeks and months of talking and rhetoric, some decisions seem to be being taken in the convention at last.

The topics of this convention session are the results of the working groups I (sustainability) and III (legal personality). Both will be discussed at length in the Convention Plenary. Both documents are likely be approved, but this does not necessarily mean that they will find their way into the treaty in the same form as they are presented. Although both topics seem to be rather technical, they will have an important input in the future work of the convention.

“What has been my advice to the working groups? In a word, "simplify". The texts which govern how the Union and the Community work are so complex as to be in many cases incomprehensible to the citizen (unless blessed with an education in this College). Yet they matter crucially to the citizen. One knows how their complexity has come about, through successive diplomatic negotiations amending or partially amending the basic texts, decking them out with additions and exceptions, protocols and declarations, all at the time politically important to someone, and resulting in a text now standing at 1 045 pages.”

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, at the College of Europe Bruges, 2nd October 2002.

1. How do you qualify the outcome of the Convention so far?
We cannot talk about the outcome at this stage. But I think the athmosphere is improving all the time in the sense that the discussions become more concrete. The convention is a very good combination of large-scale visioning and almost concrete drafting of texts taking place in the working groups.

2. Is there any difference in the atmosphere in the Convention compared with the working group 3 on legal personality?
Working group III dealt with a very specific problematique. Discussions very quite detailed and legal - even if the issue on the background was large and very much political (the strengthening of the EU as an international actor).The athmospere was more homelike. I very much enjoyed myself in that particular group.

What are your hopes and fears about the Convention process in general?

My fear is that we fail to produce a common text. Lots of work gets done, lots of working groups get set up, lots of minutes drafted, but it often looks like we are not making progress towards what we should be producing which is a new draft treaty. The main hope is of course that we do manage to produce one final document. Come September, the listening phase will be over, the working groups will be starting to move, and we should start to see some concrete outcomes.

Do you think the danger of not producing a final text is due to the organisational structure of the Convention, or due to political differences among those represented in the Convention?

I think there was a lack of clarity right from the outset concerning the overall goals of the Convention. You can’t sort out the organisational structure if you have no idea what the outcome is going to be. If you know for example that you are going to produce a draft treaty, you would know which working groups should be organised. Before you get into the general discussions, you have to have in mind what you want to achieve, when it comes to treaty changes.

The first day of the second meeting of the convention plenary dealt with the question of a single legal personality for the European Union. Basis for the discussion was the draft final report of the working group III "legal personality". The working group proposes to give the Union a single legal personality. In order to make the Union structure better understandable they further suggested merging the two main treaties, the Treaty of the European Union and the European Community Treaty. On the question of merging the three pillars of the Union the working group concluded, that in one single treaty the pillar structure would be obsolete, nevertheless they did not clearly suggest the merging of the three pillars.

The broad majority welcomed the results of the working group and focused on the affect of these rather technical questions for the European Union.

For most of the convention members a single legal personality for the European Union would mean that the EU could speak with one voice and would be able to act as a legal person. This includes signing international treaties, which so far only member states could do. Mr. Brok suggested for example that the European Union should join the European Convention of Human Rights. Another convention member suggested asking for a seat of the European Union in the security council of the United Nations. The only objections on a single legal personality were raised by Peter Hain and some eurosceptics, which feared that the European Union could not act on the international scene with a strong voice, if they had a single legal personality.

On Thursday the 3rd of October, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was reporting to the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the European Parliament about the progress of the convention. Besides many already known facts there were also some interesting new points.

Quite surprising for many was the timetable of the convention he has in mind. He stated that he does not see any urgent need to finish reforms of the European Union before enlargement takes place. Answering questions of some MEPs he said, that the plan is to finish the work of the convention first half of next year and wished that the IGC will finish in the second half, in which case the result could be ratified before the first round of enlargement. But he said that there is no connection between enlargement and the convention at all. From his point of view enlargement would not be affected, in case that the IGC will not decide on any result or the result will not be ratified. He also made a division between the constitutional aspects the convention will decide on and provisions of treaties which will not be constitutional. In case that negotiations take longer than expected, he assumed that it might be possible that the constitutional provisions will be finished until summer 2003 and treaty changes which will not be constitutional could be decided on in a later stage. Whether this would be more transparent to the people and how that is going to work technically was unanswered.

President of the European Commission elected by the European Parliament

During the plenary session in Strasbourg the Intergroup "European Constitution" in the European Parliament discussed the topic ‘Presidency in the EU’.

MEPs from five different political groups call on the Convention to include in the European Constitution the principle that the president of the European Commission is elected by the European Parliament. Members of the Intergroup will next week present a written declaration according to rule 51 of the Rules of Procedure seeking to gain a majority in the European Parliament in favour of the demand.

Finnish Youth Co-Operation Allianssi and JEF- Finland proposed during the spring 2002 to organise a national youth convention in Finland. Now the major decisions for the convention have been taken; the Finnish ministry of education and the Finnish information centre of European Parliament have assigned funding.

The national youth convention’s main aim is to enhance young people’s involvement in the discussion on the EU’s future and to bring out the youth’s voice in the work of the EU's future convention.

The youth convention is planned to gather 80-120 young Finnish citizens (aged from 16 to 30 years) to a plenary session on the 21nd and the 22rd of November 2002. There is a strong educational aspect in the project and therefore members of the youth convention also work on the issues before and after the plenary session. Special attention will be put on media coverage in order to spread the idea of youth involvement in the discussion on EU’s future.

European Citizenship Action/ European Network Against Racism/ European Youth Forum

Demonstrating the extent to which the Convention has changed the terms of the European debate, three European NGOs are joining forces to put European citizenship on the Convention’s agenda. The objective of the hotline, which will run from 1 October-30 November, is to bring the central issues relating to European citizenship to the attention of the Convention, as well as to stimulate public discussion on citizenship issues more broadly.

The hotline is intended to be a help-line, but also a channel for proposals on what European citizenship should become, and is intended to be part of a campaign to stimulate a broader discussion of citizenship issues in the debate on the future of Europe. As Tony Venables, director of ECAS, stated, citizenship must be at the heart of any European Constitution, yet to date the topic has scarcely merited a mention in the Convention’s deliberations. Although the proposal to integrate the Charter of Fundamental Rights is very welcome, he stressed that citizenship is not only about rights, but is also a matter of responsibilities, of participation, and of belonging to a community. Citizenship must be central to the Convention’s final constitutional proposals if these are to have any credibility.

PRIORITIES FOR EUROPE – THE PARTY OF EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS IN THE CONVENTION ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE

3 October 2002
A third of the Convention’s members are from the Party of European Socialists. They represent the EU, its member states and countries seeking EU membership. This document – published as detailed work begins on recommendations for a new European Constitution – sets out their vision of a Europe with a strong social dimension and enhanced democracy.

Further papers examining aspects of the debate on Europe’s future in greater detail will be published as the work of the Convention proceeds. A final position paper will be published before the Convention concludes its work in June 2003.

The European Policy Centre also published an interesting text on how to shape a constitution for the Union. Click here.