Brussels, 17/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - Visiting the European Commission in Brussels on Monday, the French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin suggested that the European Convention take the fifth French republic as its starting point. He mooted the idea for the first time in front of EPP prime ministers meeting in Silvio Berlusconi's home in Sardinia a week ago (see p.4), but it was not greeted with much enthusiasm by Romano Prodi, who simply commented at a press conference that it was clear that no institutional system could simply be adopted without changes. Raffarin was at pains to present his proposal as "one contribution among many" but which could get round some of the current problems, asserting that it was true that the French constitutional tradition could provide a number of solutions, and he didn't think that Valéry Giscard d'Estaing could oppose them. He added that it was necessary to bypass the clash of Community logic and intergovernmental logic.
France, the UK and Spain would probably favour the establishment of a President of the European Council with a several year term of office, to act as the EU's diplomatic spokesperson. The French idea consists of making a European President of this nature responsible for the common foreign policy, with the President of the European Commission playing a similar role to the role of prime minister, but several Member States (Germany, for instance, and most of the small Member States) oppose this on the grounds that it would automatically weaken the position of the President of the European Commission.