Brussels, 10/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - German Social Democrat Jo Leinen (co-rapporteur with Inigo Mendez de Vigo at the European Parliament on the Laeken European Council) and German Christian Democrat Elmar Brok, President of the EP's Foreign Affairs Committee, have both welcomed Monday's General Affairs Council's decision to give EU accession candidate countries observer status for the upcoming Convention to prepare for the next round of institutional reform (see EUROPE of 8/9 October, p.6). Both MEPs, however, feel that the Convention should make an effort to go beyond simply putting forward different "options".
In a press release, Jo Leinen deplores the fact that the Convention would be downgraded to a debating club rather than being a political body (and not an academic event). The President of the Union of European Federalists says the Convention should be given the mandate of putting forward a coherent draft Constitutional Treaty by the end of the Greek Presidency in June 2003.
Elmar Brok told a handful of journalists that the Convention should first try and reach a common position, rather than mere options, stressing that the Convention's success would largely hang on the authority of its President. He indicated that the idea of advancing the timetable (from 2004 to 2003) was gaining ground, whereby the Convention would present the results of its work in October 2003, to be concluded by the European Council in December 2003 (under the Italian Presidency). Politicians would have to bite the bullet immediately and avoid a new six-month long Intergovernmental Conference, exclaimed Mr Brok (explaining that he had already followed two IGCs as a European Parliament observer). Mr Brok called for an extension of the topics to be discussed in the Convention to include the security and defence policy. In this connection, he felt it was interesting that NATO's Parliamentary Assembly in Ottawa (which members of the US Congress naturally belong to) had adopted a text noting that the CFSP currently covered the Petersberg tasks, meaning the possibility of extending the EU's CFSP missions in the future. Commenting on the demands made by the CDU concerning "After Nice" in a document by the CDU's European Policy committee that he had chaired, the German MEP said that the decisive demand was the one for the EU Council to make a distinction between legislative work (which has to be public) and executive work (the CDU document argues that the legislative Council could work, like the Bundesrat, as a second chamber).