Since the Convention hasn't put forward any concrete articles on the workings of the institutions our working group had a lot of freedom in our discussions. This created a fruitful atmosphere for exploration of the agenda questions and resulted in a very lively debate. We all agreed however that there was a great need for informing people about the European project and that European NGO's like JEF have a crucial role to play.



In the following we will present the main results of our work.



The European Council

There was unanimous agreement in the group that the European Council should have no executive powers. Its role should be symbolic and the group supported a 6-month rotating presidency with summit held in the presiding country as this serves the important function of bringing the Union to the citizens.



The European Government (formerly known as the Commission)



The group supported unanimously that the Commission should be transformed into a true federal European government having the exclusive executive power on the union level including the common foreign and security policy. This government should be called the European Government.



The European Government should be lead by a President/Prime minister/or a new funky name. The candidates for President of the European Government should be nominated by the European political parties. The parties should make their candidate known before the elections to the European Parliament (EP). The President should be elected by a simple majority in the EP. The EP candidate will become President unless a 2/3 majority of the 2nd chamber (formerly known as the Council) rejects him.



The President appoints his ministers (formerly knows as commissioners) based on their competence and keeping in mind the need for a geographical balanced representation. The EP should accept or reject the entire new government by a simple majority. The government will take office unless a 2/3 majority of the 2nd chamber rejects it.



The Government can only be dismissed in its entirety by the EP by simple majority. The single ministers can only be dismissed by the President of the Government.



Congress of the PeoplesThe working group rejected unanimously the idea of creating any new institutions without a meaningful role. We support a transparent, understandable and democratic Europe.



Unions Advisory bodiesThe Union's advisory bodies (Comitee of the Regions and the Social and Economic Commitee) should have no executive powers. Their function should be to improve the quality of the European legislation and bring the civil society and local authorities closer to the Institutions.