| Author (Person) | Leonard, Dick |
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| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.8, No.36, 10.10.02, p8 |
| Publication Date | 10/10/2002 |
| Content Type | News |
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Date: 10/10/02 By After a slow start, the constitutional Convention on the future of Europe is now well into its stride. IT IS now over seven months since the inaugural meeting of the Convention on the Future of Europe on 28 February. It has taken some time to find its feet, but is now beginning to get its teeth into the meat of the many issues (including 56 specific questions put to it by the EU heads of government at the Laeken summit last December), which it has been asked to explore. The reason for its slow start has much to do with the heterogeneous nature of its composition. It has brought together, in one body, four different categories of members, together with its chairman (Valéry Giscard d'Estaing), and two vice-chairmen, (Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene), who were nominated at Laeken. The remaining 102 members comprise:
The first two categories include representatives from the 13 accession countries (including Turkey), as well as from the existing 15 member states. There are also 102 alternate members, plus 13 observers from the 'social partners' and other EU institutions, each of whom has speaking rights. The commissioners started off with a distinct advantage. There were only two of them, but they were playing on their own ground, in Brussels, with the whole machinery of the Commission behind them, enabling them to produce a stream of discussion documents which they hoped would set the tone for the Convention's deliberations. The MEPs, also, benefited from the Brussels venue, their experience of EU procedures and the fact that the Convention was meeting in their own parliamentary building. The national MPs were handicapped by their lack of familiarity with EU politicking and had to learn fast to catch up with their Euro-colleagues. Those from the accession countries had additional problems, as there is no simultaneous interpretation to and from their languages. They are permitted to provide their own interpreters, but fortunately most of them are good linguists and normally choose to speak in English, or in some cases French or German. The government representatives, with some notable exceptions, particularly Britain's Peter Hain, were initially hesitant to participate in the debates, being more used to negotiating behind closed doors. Now, after several months' experience, the differences between the categories appear less stark and the members are beginning to blend into a genuine forum. The Convention has been meeting twice monthly, each time including one afternoon-evening and one morning session. Guided by a 13-member praesidium, which sets the agendas for its meetings, it has established a business-like set of procedures, with speakers restricted to three minutes (or just one minute for those who have not booked in advance). There is no provision for voting, the chairman normally summing up after each discussion and indicating whether, in his view, a consensus has been reached. Fears that Giscard would turn out to be an unresponsive or over-bearing chairman have not been borne out. He listens attentively to all the contributions from the floor, occasionally breaking off for cryptic discussions with Sir John Kerr, the wily former top British diplomat, who is secretary-general of the Convention and expected to be the chief draftsman of its final report. The Convention's timetable has been divided into three phases - listening, discussing and drafting. The first stage, which included hearing the views of civic society representatives, whose spokesmen addressed the Convention in five two-hour hearings in July, has now concluded, and after the summer break attention turned to discussing the reports of ten working groups set up to consider specific issues. Last week's meetings debated the reports from two of these groups - on the legal personality of the EU and subsidiarity. The ten issues under consideration are listed in the box, above. By the time of the Copenhagen summit in mid-December, all of their reports should have been considered, and the Convention will get down to the most contentious stage of its deliberations - the drafting of its recommendations to put before the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), scheduled for 2004, at the latest. Perhaps optimistically, the Convention is hoping to wind itself up by next summer, paving the way for an autumn launch of the IGC, under the Italian presidency. Even more optimistically, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has expressed the hope that the IGC's work will be completed under his presidency, enabling a treaty to be concluded at the Rome summit in December 2003. The more divisive issues, such as whether there should be a powerful executive president of the European Union, how the president of the Commission should be chosen, and the balance between 'federalism and intergovernmentalism' have not (or not yet) been submitted to working groups. The evident hope is that, if agreement can first be reached on less contentious matters, the chances of finding a general consensus will be improved. Until now, the exchanges within the Convention have confirmed the impression that the major divide on these issues will be between the governments of Britain, France and Spain, on one side, and Germany, the Commission and the smaller member states on the other. The survival of Gerhard Schröder's government in last month's election in Germany has probably removed the risk that the intergovernmentalists would get all their own way. So far, at least within the Convention, the federalists seem to have the edge. THE TEN WORKING GROUPS
Article reviews the development of the Convention on the Future of Europe since its inaugural meeting on 28 February 2002. |
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| Subject Categories | Politics and International Relations |
