Brussels, 22/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The representatives of national parliaments within the Convention on the future of Europe met for the first time Friday morning in the premises of the European Parliament in Brussels. They had no difficulty in choosing two national parliamentarians who will be members of the Convention's Praesidium, thereby allowing the latter to hold the first formal meeting end-afternoon. Following Finland's Matti Vanhanen and Luxembourg's Paul Helminger's pulling out, although they had initially stood, the representatives of the national parliaments appointed former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton (Fine Gael) and British Labour's Gisela Stuart. Talks were also on the organisation of the work and a broad consensus emerged to underpin that it was the Convention, and not the Praesidium, that had to decide on the work schedule and the contents of the rules of procedure. The national parliamentarians considered that the draft timetable "still lacked in dynamism" and that the Convention should meet on Mondays and Tuesdays rather than Thursdays and Fridays as envisaged. They also began organising their work as component and hoped that preparatory meetings would be held twice a month. An informal bureau comprising the two members of the Praesidium and the parliamentarians of the country holding the Council Presidency should co-ordinate work. The parliamentarians also insisted on officials from national parliaments being part of the Convention's Secretariat.
A Convention in which 15 ministers and 26 former ministers will sit, very
few women and a small number of Eurosceptics
The Convention that will hold its inaugural meeting next Friday will have a clearly political aspect, as, whereas some Heads of State or Government have chosen to have themselves represented by academics or diplomats, among the 105 members (you may recall that the two representatives of the Romanian parliament have yet to be appointed) we find not only a majority of parliamentarians (European, of Member States and candidate States), but also a large number of ministers and former ministers. Thus, incumbent ministers are 15 in number: 6 for the EU, if we also count the minister-president of Baden-Wurttemberg, Erwin Teufel, these are Louis Michel, Pierre Moscovici, Gianfranco Fini, Peter Hain and Lena Hjelm-Wallen; 9 for the candidate countries (those that have decided to send ministers to the Convention are: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Turkey). Remains to be seen whether there will need to be changes due to the outcome of the many elections expected (six in the EU this year alone: France, Germany, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden).
In addition, among the delegates to the Convention there is a former President of the French Republic, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and 26 former ministers, including prime ministers, like Jean-Luc Dehaene, Giuliano Amato, Lamberto Dini, Jacques Santer, John Bruton, Poul Schluter, for the EU, and Alfred Sant, Maltese Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998 for the candidate countries. In all, the EU Member States are sending 14 former ministers to the Convention and the candidate countries 12.
As for the political colour of the delegates, whereas, for the European Parliament, the EPP Group has the largest number of members in the Convention, if we observe the representatives of the governments and national parliaments we can count 17 Socialists of Social-Democrats, 15 delegates belonging to the EPP family, 7 Liberals, the others being from parties like Fianna Fail, Alleanza nazionale, FPO, or the Eurosceptic Danish People's Party. Euroscpetics are thus represented, even though we can only evaluate at ten or so declared Eurosceptics: two Danes (Peter Skaarup, and Jens-Peter Bonde MEP, who, however, proclaims himself to be a "Euro-realist"), British Conservative David Heathcoat-Amory (who, at the time, left the Major Government to be freer to campaign against the EMU), the Austrian parliamentarian, Reinhard Bosch (FPO), and, among the delegates of candidate States that have already spoken up, the Czech MP Jan Zahradil (author of the pamphlet "Real Interest in the Real World" and the Manifesto of Euro-Realism), the Slovak MP Irena Belohorska, and, no doubt, also the former Maltese Prime Minister Alfred Sant (whose government "froze" the previous government's request to join the EU).
As for women, while awaiting the appointment of the representatives of the Romanian Parliament, they are but 16, faced with 87 men.