Berlin, 22/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the conference on "Europe without borders" organised in Berlin last weekend by the Internationales Bertelsmann-Forum, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder hoped that the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights would be included in the Union's Treaty as element of a kind of European Constitution.
At the conference, in which in particular Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, French and German Foreign Ministers Hubert Vedrine and Joschka Fischer, the High Representative for Cfsp, Javier Solana and Ukraine President Kuchma took part, European Commission President Romano Prodi wondered: "Does the European Union need a fully fledged constitution? This is a big question. I would personally answer 'yes', I believe that the Charter (…) should be the first part of this constitutional process". But this, "I repeat, is a major question that must be discussed in the overall debate". Yet, according to him, the debate on Europe's future "goes far beyond the four points set for 2004 in the Nice treaty," as "between now and the 2004 conference what we have to decide is nothing less than the future nature of the Union". One of the dominant topics of post-Nice will, other than the simplification of the treaties, must be clarification of the role of the nation state versus the EU level, Prodi reaffirmed, adding that the White Paper on governance that the Commission is to publish this summer "will analyse how the different levels interact, and it will suggest new models of interaction", whereas that, in second stage, the subject of "who does what" will have to be addressed. He also stressed that "one thing must be crystal clear: this is a dynamic exercise designed to benefit everyone, not a power game of rivalry between the different levels".
Asked by the press about an interview published this Monday in the Belgian daily de Standaard, in which Commissioner Frits Bolkestein expresses his scepticism at a federal Europe (see below), the Commission's spokesperson recalled that the European Commission had already had exchanges of views on questions of the future (after the speech by Joschka Fischer at Humboldt University, and before certain major speeches by President Prodi) and that there would be further discussions this year, formal or not, on these issues. The spokesperson also confirmed that, following the conclusion of the IGC that ended with the Treaty of Nice, European Commissioner Michel Barnier would continue to play a role in institutional issues, and thus the post-Nice process.
In the interview in De Standaard, Mr. Bolkestein states in particular that a federal Europe seems unthinkable, and, moreover undesirable, and that he had the intention of saying so to the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt (who will chair the European Council in the second half of the year). In addition, he regretted his country's attitude (the Netherlands) in Nice, considering that the extra vote it secured in the Council in relation to Belgium was not worth the ill-feeling it had caused between The Hague and Brussels.