Eager to play a leading role in the follow-up to the conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the European Parliament voted on Wednesday 4 May in Strasbourg to launch a Convention to prepare a reform of the functioning of the European Union (see EUROPE 12943/6).
MEPs instruct the Committee on Constitutional Affairs to prepare a second draft resolution by June calling for the opening of such a Convention on the basis of Article 48 of the EU Treaty.
This resolution should indicate which Articles could be amended and in what way. In their resolution, MEPs outline some areas where institutional improvements are desirable: - sustaining the “innovative and common solutions” undertaken for health, economic growth and social cohesion during the Covid-19 pandemic; - the “full” implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights; - climate and biodiversity protection; - granting a right of legislative initiative for Parliament; - the end of unanimous decision-making in the EU Council.
The aim of MEPs is to put pressure on the EU Council to take a position on Parliament’s request, if possible still under the French Presidency. A simple majority of Member States is needed to decide to convene a Convention leading to an institutional reform of the EU.
In Tuesday’s plenary debate on the outcome of the Conference on the Future of Europe, representatives of the pro-European forces in Parliament - Paulo Rangel (EPP, Portugal), Iratxe García Pérez (S&D, Spain), Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe, Belgium), Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, Germany) and Helmut Scholz (The Left, Germany) - had all pleaded for the Conference not to stop at the final event of the conclusions, scheduled for 9 May in Strasbourg, but to lead to the convening of a Convention.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the natural way forward” was to convene a Convention to “prepare the EU for the next decade”, said Mr Rangel. For Mr Verhofstadt, Parliament should continue the leadership and “see where the conclusions can be applied immediately, such as the creation of transnational lists” (see EUROPE 12944/1). And for issues requiring treaty change, such as a “health union” or “energy union”, “the end of unanimity in the EU Council and Parliament’s right of initiative”, the only way forward is to call for the convening of a Convention.
“Federal Europe is not a plot”, as the proposals on the table were supported by 80% of the citizens present at the conference, said Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, Germany), convinced that in the event of a blockage in the EU Council, this would inflict “irreparable damage” on Europe.
The nationalist Group Identity and Democracy (ID) and the sovereignist Group ECR criticised the citizens’ consultation process as opaque, biased and costly. Their alternative resolutions were rejected by the plenary.
On behalf of the ID Group, Hélène Laporte of France felt that the initial contract to which her Group had subscribed at the start of the Conference - participation of all political families, conclusions not written in advance, holding a referendum in case of treaty change - had not been fulfilled. The ID Group’s motion for a resolution considered, among other things, that “the Conference on the Future of Europe risks being used to bypass the mechanisms of representative and parliamentary democracy”.
The ECR Group is of the same opinion. Michiel Hoogeveen from the Netherlands denounced the conclusions of the conference as legitimising a pre-defined “federalist ‘wishlist’”. In its draft resolution, the ECR Group denounced a process that “gave the Brussels federalist group a pretext to launch a new round of European centralisation”.
For the non-attached members, Spain’s Carles Puigdemont regretted that “the Europe of the past” had prevented “the right to self-determination of European nations, such as Catalonia, Corsica or Flanders” from being included in the Conference’s conclusions.
See Parliament’s resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/1hp (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)