On Tuesday 21 January, MEPs representing the ‘European Federalist Movement’ relaunched the European Parliament’s initiative, launched at the end of 2023, calling for the European Council to convene a Convention to reform the European treaties with a view to future EU enlargement (see EUROPE 13298/7).
“Everything is prepared to launch a European Convention in the first half of 2025,” said Daniel Freund (Greens/EFA, German).
According to the ‘Project 27’ declaration of the Spinelli Group of federalist MEPs, of which Mr Freund is a member, the Convention should lead to a simplification of the decision-making procedure in the EU Council through less reliance on unanimity of the Member States. As an intermediate step to abandoning unanimity, but one that would still require institutional reform of the EU, Mr Freund suggests a system where a country’s veto would have to be supported by three other Member States in order to be validated.
The signatories of the declaration - Lukas Mandl (EPP, Austrian), Gabi Bischoff (S&D, German), Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe, Italian), Daniel Freund and Nikolas Farantouris (The Left, Greek) - are in favour of giving the EU greater powers over energy, health and social policies. They are in favour of strengthening the EU’s military capabilities, in particular to speed up arms deliveries to Ukraine.
In order to establish the democratic legitimacy of the EU institutions, the elected federalists believe that the process of nominating candidates (‘Spitzenkandidaten’) for the European elections should allow the European Parliament to designate the President of the Commission, a person to whom the Member States would give their consent.
See the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/f58 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)