Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares Bueno, pledged, on Thursday 19 October in Strasbourg, that the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union would ask the Member States to give their opinion on the European Parliament’s proposal to convene a Convention to reform the EU’s institutional architecture.
“I can assure you that the Spanish Presidency will respect its obligations under Article 48 of the EU Treaty and will take this debate to the European Council”, declared Mr Albares Bueno during a debate in the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO). Referring to the discussions on EU enlargement held at the extraordinary European summit in Granada at the beginning of October (see EUROPE 13266/1), he said that the time had come to reflect on the internal workings of the EU to enable it to remain as “effective” when it has more than thirty member countries. For him, this means more decisions by qualified majority of Member States in order to avoid deadlocks, while establishing “a safeguard mechanism” to protect vital national interests.
As far as the timetable is concerned, the Spanish Secretary of State for European Affairs, Pascual Navarro Ríos, claimed that it was possible, despite the “tight” timetable, to ask the EU General Affairs Council (GAC) on 12 December to vote on the Parliament’s request by a simple majority of EU countries. He urged MEPs to adopt their report setting out the European Parliament’s vision of a reformed Union no later than the second plenary session in November.
“I think it is possible to achieve a simple majority. We will then pass the dossier on to President Charles Michel so that he can put it on the agenda of the European Council”, he said. He added that his country’s approach was both to find short-term arrangements to improve the functioning of the EU and to reflect on in-depth changes as part of a wide-ranging revision of the Treaties.
On Wednesday 25 October, the AFCO Committee will be asked to vote on the draft revision of the Treaties submitted by five MEPs from the EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and The Left groups (see EUROPE 13250/16).
In the debate that followed the presentation of the Spanish Presidency’s priorities on institutional issues, the representatives of the S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and The Left groups urged their counterparts in the EPP group not to reopen the dossier on fundamental issues at the risk of jeopardising a compromise that has been hard won and delaying the procedure.
Several MEPs, including Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, Italian) and Damian Boeselager (Greens/EFA, German), called on the Christian Democrats to seize the “historic opportunity” for the GAC to transmit Parliament’s request to the European Council. Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, German) and Gabriele Bischoff (S&D, German) noted that, in a spirit of compromise, all the groups had had to accept elements that they did not support, these elements being counterbalanced by others that were sufficiently convincing for the proposal to be supported as a whole. Many MEPs have pointed out that, at this stage, it is mainly a question of launching a process that could take shape after the European elections in June 2024 with the convening of a Convention.
The political groups are currently negotiating compromise amendments, notably on the operation of the so-called ‘Article 7’ procedure of the Treaty on respect for the Rule of law, without these amendments altering the overall balance of the text.
However, the EPP group has difficulty in accepting certain provisions of the proposal on the table. “The real political discussion starts now”, said Vladimír Bilčík (EPP, Slovakian). For Paulo Rangel (EPP, Portuguese), certain controversial issues concern European citizenship, the composition of the European Parliament, pan-European consultations and qualified majority decisions in the EU Council.
I spent hours convincing four German co-rapporteurs and Mr Rangel of the need to change the qualified majority thresholds in the EU Council in order to put an end to the Franco-German quasi-veto, and Mr Rangel is now saying that he is against a proposal that is in the interests of the ‘small’ and ‘medium’ countries!, exclaimed Guy Verhofstadt (Renew Europe, Belgian).
In the end, Sven Simon (EPP, German) said he was convinced that a solution could be found “next week”, given the time pressure.
Electoral law. On the reform of EU electoral law, Mr Navarro Ríos admitted that the creation of a European constituency was not feasible due to too much opposition from Member States for whom this issue touches on national sovereignty (see EUROPE 13210/26).
At a technical level, therefore, it is a matter of identifying and advancing the non-controversial clusters of the reform on the table. According to Mr Navarro Ríos, the Spanish Presidency still hopes to raise the issue of transnational lists again at the EU ‘General Affairs’ Council on Wednesday 15 November.
Furthermore, Pascual Navarro Ríos said that an agreement was “very close” between the European Parliament and the EU Council on rules to regulate online advertising for political purposes (see EUROPE 13266/16).
Lastly, François Alfonsi (Greens/EFA, French) praised the Spanish initiative to grant Catalan, Castilian and Basque the status of official languages of the EU (see EUROPE 13253/22), a subject again on the agenda of the GAC on Tuesday 24 October. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)