Bruton urges shake-up on Convention

Date: 05/12/02

By Dana Spinant

THE Convention on the future of the EU's mission to draft a constitution is doomed unless the present rules of debate are changed, according to former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton.

The praesidium member says that the present system will have to change 'if a consensus is to be achieved on the most difficult questions'.

Speaking on 29 November in the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish parliament, Bruton said: 'The idea that a consensus might be divined from a succession of two or three minutes speeches in plenary sessions is unreal. It will not happen.'

The centre-right Fine Gael member proposes instead that the Convention's plenary be divided into four working groups, with each analysing the entire text of a constitutional treaty drafted by the praesidium, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's inner circle. Bruton wants the praesidium to draw up a 'martyr draft' (a proposal bound to be attacked but necessary) on which all Convention members work in parallel in the four groups. The praesidium would then prepare a final draft.

He sees this as the most sensible way of achieving a compromise.

It would be over-optimistic, he argues, to believe that a consensus can be built by the various groups which make up the Convention membership (MEPs, national parliamentarians, government representatives) or by political caucuses (the European People's Party, the Socialists or Liberals).

Convention members, and not groups, are the basis for compromise, he adds.

Bruton also warns against the risk of the future constitutional treaty 'fossilising the European Union in a particular shape' by providing for a certain institutional and political set-up which could not evolve.

Such a fossilisation could be the result of a rigid list of competences for the Union and member states or of an excessive application of the subsidiarity principle.

A second danger identified by Bruton is changing the balance of power between institutions, to make the Council of Ministers stronger at the expense of the European Commission.

This would be a serious risk if a post of president of the EU is set up, the Irish ex-premier claims.

Equally dangerous, according to Bruton, is the proposal to allow member states to withdraw from the Union.

'A formal provision for withdrawal could become a bargaining weapon that could be abused by bigger states who were not getting their way.

'While a withdrawal threat from a small state might be ignored, even the possibility of such a threat from Germany or France would give those countries an inordinate increase in their bargaining power,' he warns. Such an exit clause was mentioned in the outline of a constitutional treaty presented by Giscard on 28 October.

A senior Convention official branded the concerns expressed by Bruton as incoherent.

'It is not consistent to on one hand demand flexibility and warn against 'fossilisation' and then reject the possibility for a state to withdraw from the Union.

'What do you do if a state fails to accept changes in the Union, by ratifying a treaty, and cannot opt out of the Union either? Then the whole system is blocked.'

The official also rejected the idea that a withdrawal clause would be used by large EU states as a blackmail tool.

'It is not serious to think big states would play games to threaten the small and that they would leave the Union unless they get what they want.

'This is science-fiction, it is not the Union we know.'

The Convention on the future of the EU's mission to draft a constitution is doomed unless the present rules of debate are changed, according to former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton.