Brussels, 02/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Convention has now come to its "study phase" and after having responded to the question of, "how can the Union carry out the missions that it is clearly obliged to perform and what exactly should they and how can their remit be clearly respected?" It will e able to go onto the "proposal phase" during which it will be necessary to "in light of a vast consensus on the ends and the means, chose the best institutional mechanisms, namely, the best way of communicating between the three sides of the triangle". This effectively constitutes the declaration of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on 2 October during the opening speech of the 53rd academic year of the College of Europe in Bruges during the opening ceremony performed by the President of the Governing Council of the College, Jean-Luc Dehaene. During the ceremony, the Rector, Professor Robert Picht presented the sponsor of Promotion 2002-2003, the Austrian, Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing declared that today, "it was not a matter of establishing one's preference for the Community method or intergovernmental co-operation. Neither is it a matter of choosing between between Monnet or Metternich. It is about building, around the Acquis of European integration and the three European institutions - the Council, Parliament and Commission - namely, around the single market, monetary union and a larger coherent system", which would allow the enlarged Union to function and act, "in the political areas for which we are currently beginning our co-operation". Valéry Giscard d'Estaing added that, "We need to be as equally innovating and pragmatic as Monnet and his generation were in their era: we will carry out a Renewed Monnet". Mr Giscard d'Estaing, who recalled that the European Convention has set up ten working groups, noted that this would allow the Convention to "hold, before Christmas, ten new plenary debates on the basis of their recommendations". He remarked: "What did I advise the working groups to do? In a nutshell: simplify". He went on to add that "one must not over-simplify, though" as, as the debates of the Convention show, "there is no single and generally applicable scheme of things". Thus, the Member States would not accept, for the coming period, integral application of the Community method to the whole range of CFSP questions, he said, "not to mention defence policy" and, "conversely, even the supporters of the intergovernmental approach admit that it would be out of the question to abandon the Community method regarding external trade policy". "It makes us give the best of each method, and each has its role to play", affirmed VGE. He goes on to cite the example of the Convention working group on subsidiarity chaired by Inigo Mendez de Vigo. According to the report by this working group (presented on Friday in plenary), "there is a strong move towards national parliaments being involved in this control", which would be "a major innovation" and "a breakthrough for European integration", said VGE. Regarding the Amato working group on the status of legal entity (for which recommendations are along the lines of a merger of the EC and TEU treaties and an approximation and rationalisation of legal instruments of the various pillars "with similar scope"), VGE notes that this opens the road to simplification of the treaties and to a "new single document that inevitably takes over from the earlier texts". According to VGE, this poses three questions: "Who will embody this legal personality that we must give a Constitution? What will be the nature of our redirected Union? (in his view, it will be a "Union of European States closely coordinating their policies and managing certain common powers in a federal way"). What will be the denomination of this redirected Union?. Considering that the choice is between "European Community, European Union, United Europe, United States of Europe", VGE notes that "this question is not futile" and that it would therefore be "interesting to know how Europeans feel about the question, mainly young Europeans" before discussing it within the Convention.
Recalling that the Convention will make a preliminary presentation of an architecture for the future constitutional treaty end October, VGE confirmed that his preference goes to a single text that partly covers the constitutional nature and partly the policies, possibly completed by protocols and comprising certain details of application. The constitutional part "must present the basis of our Union in an understandable way. This is a very important question, and we must hold a profound debate on this point", he asserted.
In the context of the main institutional issues, he pointed out that they would be treated during the final stages of the Convention's work, when it had been defined more clearly with regard to the different missions and procedures of the Union. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing also recalled that there would also be a clearer idea of the general form that would be need in the recommendations. The President of the Convention observed that the transition created by Monnet was evidence of his own farsightedness with his proposal of creating the European Council (see p 6) as this body has succeeded in establishing a "line of solidarity between the Community aspects and the common action of the Member States. The European Council is a body that is now recognised by the treaties and the mission of the Convention is to help it to function optimally, explained Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. In a personal capacity, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing explained that it might be useful to push the internationalisation process forward a bit, with regard to European problems, as well as the involvement of the highest level political leaders in the Member States. He also explained that it was for this reason that he was interested in a "Congress of European Peoples", that would bring European MEPs and national MPs together periodically to examine the "State of the Union". Valéry Giscard d'Estaing explained that his sort of "global constituency" of Europe would not have legislative powers (which would remain strictly reserved to the European Parliament), whereas the Congress would be "consulted on the development of the Union and is possible future enlargement" and "could be "decide or confirm the nominations of certain important Union policies". He also underlined the fact that "this issue was a possibility that the Convention would be considering.
The overall proposal to be made by the European Convention, based on the guidelines from work groups on the overriding problems had to respond to all questions and had to be carefully prepared. The goal had to be simplification and where possible, the abridging of the future work of the Intergovernmental Conference that would follow, explained Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Quoting Monnet for the fifth time, he confirmed that "I am not an optimist, I am determined". He was also keen to quote George Washington who in 1787 said, "we cannot ensure success but we can deserve".