Brussels, 06/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Friday morning, the European Convention is to decide on the composition of the six working groups to be set in place. The chairpersons of the groups (all members of the Praesidium) have in the meantime specified the mandate that the latter are to fulfil.
1) Economic governance. According to Klaus Hänsch, the group could above all ask: - at institutional level; whether the breakdown of powers on economic and monetary issues is clear enough and whether an increased role for the European Parliament should be envisaged; whether or not the Eurogroup should be made official; what form the euro zone's representation should take in international meetings; - at the plan of economic policies: whether the Stability Pact should be improved; if eventual additional measures for the coordination of economic policies should be binding; and whether the open coordination method is sufficient in social and employment matters; if tax harmonisation can be envisaged for "certain crossborder sectors" or whether "specific decision-making procedures" should be foreseen to respond to the political concerns voiced by some.
2) National parliaments. According to Gisela Stuart, the working group will mainly focus its attention on the following issues: - examination of the national control and parliament consultation mechanisms to attract attention to the systems that work the best; - legislative procedures and working practices at European level that could create difficulties for parliaments hoping to exercise effective control on the activities of their governments (lack of transparency in the legislative work of the Council, timetable difficulties …); - avenues of reflection to improve the role of the national parliaments: control at national level, contacts between national and European parliaments, inclusion of national parliamentarians in the Member State delegations when the Council acts as legislator, strengthening of the role of the COSAC (which meets delegations of the EP and of national parliaments every six months), the creation of a second parliamentary assembly responsible for subsidiarity and possibly for foreign policy and justice and home affairs, or a second chamber of the EP.
3) European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Antonio Vitorino considers the working group must avoid asking "key political questions" and rather examine specific questions such as: - in the case of integration of the Charter into the Treaty: whether the articles of the Charter should be incorporated into the Treaty, whether there should be an annexed protocol or a reference in an article of the Treaty, such as the Article 6 of the current TEU; whether direct appeal by individuals before the Court of Justice should be extended or whether the current system should be kept in place leaving the task of perfecting it up to jurisprudence; - and, in the case of EC/EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights, whether this accession may be reconciled with the principle of autonomy of Community law. The working group will be informed of the work of the Council of Europe on the technical consequences of accession for the "Strasbourg system" but, according to Mr Vitorino, it should not deal with the questions that would come under eventual negotiation between the Union and the Council of Europe.
4) Complementary powers. Henning Christophersen asks whether Member States should be given full power for matters in which the Union currently has complementary authority, or whether the limits of the Union's complementary authority should be made explicit? He believes the group could envisage a four-stage working programme: - definition of the notion of "complementary competences"; - analysis of what the EU "effectively" does in this field (and consequences of introducing stricter conditions for recourse to Article 308 or the inclusion in the Treaty of principles established by the Court governing the use of this article; - analysis of potential conflict between EU and Member State powers, with one or two hearings of experts; - conclusions.
5) Legal personality. The working group should above all examine the consequences of explicit recognition of the EU's legal personality and a merger of the Union's legal personality with that of the European Community, and note that, if they can contribute to the simplification of the treaties and to more effective EU action at international level, says Giuliano Amato. While the Community has legal personality (Article 281 of the EC Treaty), attempts made during the 1996 IGC to attribute the legal personality to the Union also have failed. In the Amsterdam Treaty, Article 24 recognises the Union as such has the ability to conclude international agreements under headings V and VI (the EU has since concluded, on the basis of this article, two agreements with the FRY on the activities of the Union's surveillance mission), but while some interpret this article as implicitly conferring a legal personality upon the EU, others believe it only sets in place a simplified procedure allowing the Union to conclude international agreements on behalf of the Member States.
6. Subsidiarity. According to Mendez de Vigo, this working group should consider the application of subsidiary (which comes under Article 5 of the EU and is set out in the Protocol to the Amsterdam Treaty) to check whether the criteria in the Protocol suffice of whether they should be set out in more detail and whether new criteria were required; monitoring the application of subsidiarity, which is both political (exercised by the institutions themselves) and jurisdictional (exercised by national courts and the Court of Justice). In terms of political control, Mendez de Vigo suggests several avenues to be explored: Mr/Ms Subsidiarity for each Member of the European Council and MEP; a subsidiarity factsheet for every piece of Commission legislation; strengthening the role of national parliaments through COSAC or an ad hoc body (national parliaments? Joint European Parliament-national parliament committee?). In terms of jurisdictional control, some people have refereed to the potential of setting up a "Subsidiarity" court at the Court of Justice, or setting up a co-operation mechanism between the Court of Justice and national Constitutional Courts. This group will also consider the potential need of extending the power to refer subsidiarity issues to the Court of Justice of MPs, the Committee of the Regions and constitutional bodies whose legislative powers would be challenged.