Juncker fires eve-of-summit blast over draft constitution

Date: 19/06/03

By Dana Spinant

THE draft constitution compiled by the Convention on the future of the EU would lead Europe "to its perdition", by failing to give it the means to have an effective foreign policy, warns the veteran of Europe's heads of state and government, Jean-Claude Juncker.

The prime minister of Luxembourg is the first government leader to openly criticize, in an exclusive interview with European Voice, the draft constitution, which will be presented by the Convention's chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing at this weekend's Thessaloniki summit (20-21 June).

Juncker, in the Luxembourg government since 1989, says the draft constitution fails to prepare the EU for the next half century, as Giscard had claimed.

"We were told things did not work well in the EU. I tell you: this [the Convention proposal] cannot function, unless it is polished by the intergovernmental conference [IGC]."

Juncker's most staggering attack concerns the Convention's failure to do away with the veto on common foreign and security policy (CFSP). "We are heading to our perdition."

Although he admits that EU countries are not ready, at present, to accept giving up their veto right, Juncker claims the Convention should have introduced a procedure to pass to qualified majority voting in CFSP at some point in the future.

"Keeping unanimity on CFSP and on the common defence policy and claiming that this treaty will be in force for 50 years is equivalent to giving up on Europe's international ambitions.

"I would have preferred it if we had put in perspective the possibility of integrally applying the community method to the CFSP, at a certain moment in the future.

"This perspective is absent from the compromise reached within the Convention."

Luxembourg's premier admits that Giscard sacrificed "his initial ambitions" to lay down the basis of a viable CFSP in order to achieve success in the Convention.

"He locked himself into the logic of IGCs, which must succeed, even at the price of bad compromises."

Juncker warns that the draft constitution risks introducing a perpetual conflict between the EU's leaders.

The draft "organizes a certain number of conflicts for the years to come", he said, as "it does not remove the risk of institutionalizing a real competition between the two heads" - namely, the European Commission president and a future elected president of the European Council.

Juncker points out that the text's ambiguity on the power relations between the two presidents is dangerous.

"The text will be what those who apply it will make out of it. If those who install a new elected president give him muscles, so that he becomes the strong man in the European Union, there is just such a risk [of rivalry]."

This future president, "who would have to define his role, must understand - whoever is elected to the job - that he must respect the primacy of the Commission's president and the rules of the game of European politics".

However, Juncker is relieved that the European Council's president, as proposed by the Convention's draft, would not be "the EU's CEO [chief executive officer] that Giscard, [José María] Aznar and [Jacques] Chirac wanted".

"The [initial] idea of giving the EU a powerful European Council president, with his own administration and own powers, was a megalomaniac idea. It did not correspond to the European atmosphere.

"This idea, this "Giscardian" version of the president, did not see the light of day," he said.

Juncker warns that the draft orchestrates not only conflict but also "incoherence" in the functioning of the EU. Above all, this affects the Council of Ministers, he says. With a stable European Council president and rotating chairmen for specific Council formations (General Affairs Council, Ecofin, etc) and no hierarchy between them, the system will lack coordination.

"If the governments proposed such a text, postponing for later the essentials of the organization questions, they would no doubt have been accused of not being up to the task."

Juncker also attacked the Convention's method of work, as it did not deliver on the promised transparency.

"When the European Council gathered at Nice and engaged in all-night negotiations, it was said "this is opacity, incapacity of acting".

"When the praesidium of the Convention gathered during the night in Brussels, when they organized breakfasts or dinners to discuss the text, we are told "this is transparency"."

"I remain puzzled by the kindness of commentators towards this behaviour which reminds me of that of governments when they act alone [in IGCs]."

But despite his criticism, Juncker insists that "it was important to have an accord in the Convention. We needed this intersection between different positions".

He admits that the forum's work has been affected by the present lack of trust among member states' leaders. "I believe that we love each other less than before."

Jean Claude Jucker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, has criticsed the European Convention for failing to deliver on its claim that it would prepare the EU for the next 50 years.