Brussels, 04/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - Wolfgang Schäuble, former German CDU President who currently plays a key role in the working group of the European People's Party (EPP) set up to reflect on the institutional and constitutional future of the European Union, urged for a constitutional Treaty ("Verfassungsvertrag") to be adopted in 2004. The treaty should clearly define the powers of Member States (and their federate entities) and European institutions and define "in clear and comprehensible terms" the aim of European integration. "In order to really promote transparency, public support and the understanding of citizens for the European idea, we shall have to give citizens an exact explication of what it is and what we want", said Mr Schäuble on Thursday evening in Brussels, speaking before a group of journalists. In this context, a clear definition of powers between national and European bodies is particularly important, he stressed, affirming that one should not go as far as to question the role and the very existence of national States". "This is not what citizens want", he said. The future constitutional treaty of the EU should be "a completely new treaty" and not just an extension of existing treaties, he added.
Mr Schäuble (who pointed out that the EPP should be able to present its ideas on the future constitutional treaty before the end of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council , during the second half of this year), said he was perfectly aware of the fact that the term "constitution" gives rise to annoyance, if not firm opposition of principle in several Member States and in the United Kingdom in particular. This should not, however, prevent a substantive debate on the future of Europe, said Mr Schäuble, while warning against a debate that is "entirely focused on terminology". Each European partner should well explain what it really has in mind when it proposes something "as differences are more often over terminology than substance", he said. "We should avoid rows over banalities and concentrate on the real questions of substance", remarked Mr Schäuble, for whom substantive differences between Member States are not insurmountable.
Mr Schäuble reacted in a generally positive manner to the recent ideas put forward by the Chancellor and SPD President Gerhard Schröder (see yesterday's EUROPE, pp.3/4), essentially because - he noted - they partly take into account the demands that the EPP has made for a long while. In his view, Chancellor Schröder's paper was "motivated more by concerns of an internal policy kind, that is, the concern not to leave the CDU the monopoly of European policy", which is "not bad in itself as a certain amount of competition on European issues can be constructive".
Mr Schäuble, however, was highly critical of the lack of coordination and consultation between the German and French governments on the future of Europe, and also concerning the recent proposals made by Mr Schröder. "The Franco-German engine must be the central part in European integration. It is not enough to say that relations are stable and normal. They must be qualitatively better than normal relations" between two European partners, he felt. Mr Schäuble was also in favour of "participation on an equal footing" by candidate countries in the debate on the future of Europe.