Stuttgart, 06/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - During the next plenary meeting of the European Convention (on 23 and 24 May), the Praesidium will be proposing the creation of a working group that will make proposals on the breakdown of powers within the EU and on subsidiarity. This was confirmed by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Chairman of the Convention, in a speech given on 5 May in Stuttgart, at the invitation of Erwin Teufel, Minister-President of Baden-Wurttemberg, on the occasion of the inauguration of the "Stuttgarter Reden zum Euroatag". Christian Palmer, the Land's Minister for European Affairs, said the speech was the first of what will become a tradition, the "Stuttgart speeches for Europe Day". Erwin Teufel, who represents the Bundesrat at the Convention, defended the thesis dear to him: without seeking to export federalism to Germany, he would like to see "liberation" of the principle of subsidiarity, so that it may be well and truly applied. The experience of Germany - a State that has for fifty years lived the federal experience - may be useful to us, said VGE, even though it is naturally not a question of copying the German model. He recalled that the public debate on the future of the Union was rekindled by the speeches of Joschka Fischer at Humboldt University in Berlin and President Rau at the European Parliament.
Europe must focus its efforts on its "key competences", in respect of subsidiarity, stressed VGE, who recalled that he had been rapporteur of the European Parliament on subsidiarity and that he had personally gone to Maastricht to insist on introducing this principle into the Treaty. As before the press in Brussels, VGE noted that, at the Convention, few requests have so far been heard for the Union to take on new powers in Member States' internal life, although he did say he was "pleasantly surprised" by the requests put forward by many Members of the Convention concerning common foreign policy. It is "vital" for the Convention to "reach concrete proposals in favour of common foreign policy clearly perceived by the public", said VGE (see also EUROPE of 17 April, p.6). In his view, in this exercise the following questions must above all be answered: - What are the mechanisms that allow the Union to speak with a single voice? - How can one rapidly and effectively prepare a common front? (It is not just a matter of speaking, but of what is said); - What are the means of influence and action that the Member States may make available to the Union in this field? VGE's conclusion is that the means do exist but that Member States are rarely able to make them available for a coherent policy implemented in common. This will take some time, and "imaginative" solutions must be found to pool all the existing means of Member States to the service of a European policy, but some recent decisions do go along the right lines, said VGE, who cited Galileo and the project for a European military transport carrier A400M (Ed.: Germany, France and the United Kingdom have signed the agreement on delivery of this Airbus carrier, and await the agreement of the five other partners, namely Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg and Turkey).