The Convention will be composed of just over 100 members, with a Presidium of 12.

The Presidium

The President of the Convention will be the former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. He will be assisted by two Vice-Presidents, the former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato and former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene. In addition the Presidium will include two representatives of the European Commission; two representatives of the European Parliament; two representatives of the national parliaments of the member states; and three representatives from the countries which will hold the Presidency of the EU during the Convention’s work.

Due to the size of the Convention, the Presidium will have an important role. They will suggest the agenda for discussion and will formulate proposals for the final document based on those discussions. At the moment, it seems likely that all decisions of the Presidium will have to be taken unanimously.

The Convention

The Convention itself will be composed of: 16 members of the European Parliament; 2 representatives of each of the national parliaments of member states and of candidate countries; and one representative of each of the governments of member states and of candidate countries. In addition there will also be observers from the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the Social Partners, and the European Ombudsman.

Although the convention members from the candidate countries are full members, they do not have the right “to prevent any consensus which may emerge from the Member States”. This ‘positive voting right’, allowing the candidate countries to vote in favour but not against, is a new invention of the political leaders at Laeken. The representatives of governments will number far fewer than the number of parliamentarians, European and national. This means that the Convention is a much more European and much more representative body than the traditional Intergovernmental Conference, and gives it the legitimacy to produce a more comprehensive result, independent of the narrow self-interests of the nation-states.