Once again, a few indications supplied by Valery Giscard d'Estaing on the ambitions and state of work of the Convention help to understand where we are heading, and how. I'm not referring to the didactic aspect, which this time was essential as the President was speaking at the opening of the new academic year of the College of Europe in Brugge (see our bulletin of 3 October, p.3). Essentially addressing students, he logically reminded them of the significance of the Convention and the circumstances of its creation. These are no new concepts for readers of Agence EUROPE. I shall rather place emphasis on two elements which, although not entirely new, clarify some of the President's fundamental guidelines.
A single treaty that will erase the old ones. Valery Giscard 'dEstaing declared that the simplification of the current treaties would lead to "a new single document, inevitable erasing the former texts and calling for its ratification as a whole". We thus see the colossal difference between his concept of this new treaty and those of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, that modified the preceding treaties without erasing them. Had a country not ratified Maastricht or Amsterdam, these two treaties would have disappeared taking us back to the previous situation, likewise for the Nice Treaty (for which, we know, one ratification is still missing). The situation would be radically different for the Constitutional Treaty, on condition of introducing the appropriate provisions for it to take effect as soon as a certain number of countries had ratified it. At that time, the current treaties would no longer exist, and those countries not to have ratified the new one, instead of annulling the outcome of the Convention,, would be placing themselves outside the renewed Union. Certainly, complex legal problems would arise, and it is unthinkable that Valery Giscard d'Estaing should want to steal himself for a new break in Europe, whereas the priority goal of the ongoing operation is precisely to put an end to the separation inflicted on our continent for half a century.
But the president never speaks lightly: if he speaks as he does, it's because he intends announcing something or else he wants to arouse reactions. He thus considers what the Convention will have to do to implement the fundamental and intangible principle by which no European country will be obliged to take part in initiatives they do not agree with, but will not be able to prevent the others from pushing ahead. Nobody will have the right to block development of the ESDP (European security and defence policy), like nobody was able to block the birth of the euro. The Convention will have to come up with serious and valid solutions for countries not wanting to follow the others in the new phase of European construction as a whole; for, for their part, these countries must now already know that, if they reject the whole, it will be they that exclude themselves from the Union.
The "war of the doctrines" will not take place. From the very outset, Valery Giscard d'Estaing rejected the hypothesis of a doctrinaire war within the Convention between the Community method and the intergovernmental method. He now considers this point to be taken for granted, as he declared in Brugge that Member states would not agree to "fully implementing the Community method to all issues" relating to CFSP (foreign policy) and ESDP (defence policy), but at the same time nobody is considering dropping the intergovernmental method in, for example, external trade policy (see the full quotation in our bulletin of 3 October, p.3). His conclusion is simple" "we must take the best from both methods, each of which has a role to play".
The difficulties will emerge when it come to turning this very simple principle into mechanisms and procedures. But that's not for the immediate future. The president confirmed that, despite the impatience of certain members of the Convention, institutional issues "will be dealt with in the final stage of the work", when the Union's missions and ambitions have been more clearly defined. Here he cited among the subjects reserved "for the final stage": the future presidency of the Council, how to appoint the Commission president, modalities for recourse to qualified majority voting, the Union's external representation, the effectiveness of the Commission's "European mission", "more readable" democratic legitimacy.
Other subject raised by the president deserve a small comment: affirmation of the role of the European Council and its significance; the importance he invests in the outcome of the work of the working group on "subsidiarity", chaired Inigo Mendez de Vigo (despite some criticisms in plenary); the four possibilities for the name of the future renewed Union, problem that he mentioned in such a way that shows the importance he attributes to it. That will be for the next short account. (F.R.)