Brussels, 29/08/2002 (Agence Europe) - Jonathan Faull, Spokesman for the President of the European Commission, did not deny, on Thursday, the information published this week in the press whereby Romano Prodi is reported to have proposed that his colleagues shorten the current Commission mandate to mid-2004 in order to facilitate enlargement by allowing a new enlarged team of 30 members (instead of the current 20) to take up their posts the following autumn. Mr Faull nonetheless clearly stated that this was just an idea contained in a memorandum intended to fuel the debate on the challenges that the Commission will have to face in coming months - a note that was not to be made public -, and that it was therefore too early to draw any definitive consequences.
The scenario recommended by Romano Prodi would mean that the mandate of the current Commission, which normally expires end 2004, would be shortened by a few months. The next elections at the European Parliament, in which the future new EU Member States will participate, must take place in June 2004. In his note, the Commission President stresses that enlargement could be effective by the middle of 2004, once the accession treaties are ratified, and that it would therefore be possible to foresee expiry of the current Commission mandate at the same moment in order to allow the freshly elected Parliament to approve the nomination of a new Commission from autumn 2004. Mr Prodi is said to have expressed the wish that the Commission give its views on this subject before the European Summit in Copenhagen in December this year. The EU hopes in fact to conclude accession talks with ten candidate countries, after which the accession treaties should be ratified during 2003 by the current and future Member States. In the information note, the president considers, moreover, that the final report from the Convention on the Further of Europe should not be published before summer 2003. Mr Prod's note was hardly tackled on Wednesday during the first College session after the summer break essentially devoted to flooding in Central Europe, but it should be the subject of indepth examination on 13 and 14 September this year during a Commission seminar on its future political strategies.