Giscard aims to learn lessons from Iraq crisis

Date: 13/02/03

Europe's split over how to deal with Iraq underlines that the Convention on the future of the EU should come up with a mechanism for an effective common foreign and security policy, its chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has said.

The former French president said the Convention, which is drafting an EU constitutional treaty, should pay close attention to the Iraq crisis and draw lessons from it.

However, he warned that the forum's work should not be derailed by Iraq-related events.

Giscard said that in failing to maintain a common position on the crisis, EU leaders had ignored their commitments under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.

They breached Article 11.2, which requires member states to support the Union's [common position on any] external action and to act "in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity".

Giscard said: "Europe should be able to have a common position on Iraq.

"The peoples of Europe have it," he added, referring to polls suggesting that the vast majority of EU citizens want a second UN resolution before any war in Iraq.

Giscard is to write to Romano Prodi, the Commission president, to urge him to investigate the "Europeans' feeling about a common action" by the EU over Iraq.

The Convention's chairman stressed it was urgent to create a functioning common foreign and security policy. "It is not acceptable that the EU, which is the third largest demographic power on the planet, is not united on this," said Giscard, adding that this was not the result of a "simplistic institutional problem, but ofthe lack of political will".

Convention members warned last week that the forum must not retire to an 'ivory tower' to work on the constitutional treaty without learning the lessons of the present foreign policy crisis.

Europe's split over how to deal with Iraq underlines that the Convention on the future of the EU should come up with a mechanism for an effective common foreign and security policy, its chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has said.

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