Brussels, 21/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - As expected, on 23 May the European Commission will approve its first written document for the "European Convention" entitled a plan for the European Union. The document was prepared under the responsibility of President Romano Prodi and Commissioners Michel Barnier and Antonio Vitorino and sets out a board vision of the Europe Community in thirty or so pages focussing on the Common Foreign and Security Policy; the creation of a European Area of Security, Freedom and Justice; and the European economic and social model. A special chapter sketches the new institutional framework that keeps the Community Method but attempts to apply the ideas of subsidiarity and complementarity between European Institutions and Member States in a more focussed manner. The document describes why the EU's action requires greater effectiveness, connected with the role Europe has to play in the world, enlargement of the EU and the need to master globalisation. The document is aimed at the Convention and does not take the form of a classic proposal to the Council with a view to intergovernmental negotiations but takes account of the components of the Convention. It will be followed by less formal contributions to the Convention.
The Commission's suggestions aim to give a more Community character to the functioning of the CFSP and to the Area of Security, Freedom and Justice, particularly for immigration policy; strengthen the co-ordination of national economic policies, giving it a more automatic and binding nature. This will mean changing the way the institutions function by strengthening the Commission's role as the representative of general European interest. In practice, the Community Method involving the Commission's exclusive right of initiative and the generalisation of decisions by qualified majority should apply to the CFSP and the Justice and Home Affairs sector. The roles of the High Representative for CFSP and the Commissioner for External Affairs will be tightened in the functioning of EMU (see "A Look Behind the News") and the Commission could send warnings directly to Member States moving away from the Stability Pact. The Commission would represent the eurozone in international financial and monetary discussions.
The refining of the plan continued on Tuesday at Heads of Cabinet level so the College on Wednesday can consider a coherent document and only has to gives its view on a limited number of undecided issues, concerning the limits to the "communitising" of CFSP, for example. Once it has been approved, it will be presented to the European Parliament in a special sitting for this purpose (in the form of an extended Conference of Presidents) by President Prodi, assisted by Barnier and Vitorino, and will be sent to the Convention at the same time.