The European Council is unavoidable. Opening the academic year 2002-2003 of the College of Europe in Brugge (see this section in yesterday's bulletin and the text in full in our EUROPE/Documents series No. 2283, annexed to this bulletin), Valery Giscard d'Estaing placed emphasis on the role that Heads of State and Government had played and do play in the construction of a united Europe. He noted that Jean Monnet had himself proposed regular meetings at that level and that he had then backed the creation of the European Council when it had been decided in December 1975 (on the initiative of Giscard d'Estaing himself, who at the time was President of the French Republic, but, modest, he omitted that detail). He then commented: "in 1975, some desperately feared that that risked conferring too marked an intergovernmental character on the Community. In fact, today's Union is much more of a supranational edifice than the Community of the 70s, and all the major novelties that have marked out this development (Single Market, Monetary Union, co-decision, European citizenship) stem form the European Council (..) The European Council is now a body established by the Treaties; the Convention's task is to help it function better. This institution's history teaches us that we must not give way to irrational fears faced with any innovation, nor err into too rigid a dogmatism".
These considerations are wholly justified. I do not understand the misgivings of some "institutional purists" regarding the European Council because it was not enshrined in the original treaties. Institutional purism must give way to the demand to associate Heads of Government in the Union's decisions, as they provide a dual and incommensurable advantage: democratic legitimacy (they are either elected directly by the people or in legislative elections); visibility for public opinion. And, whatever, they are unavoidable, if we want the EU to have real competencies in fundamental political and economic issues. How can you expect Heads of Government to agree to be left out of decisions involving relations with third countries, defence, the currency, economic policies, citizens' security? They are there when Europe decides, and intend staying there. Any attempt to sideline them would have as result that the EU and its institutions would only deal with the management of the large market and a few common policies, and that "areas exceeding the initial ambition and competencies of the Rome Treaty" (external policy, defence, common area of freedom, security and justice) would be developed outside the procedures of Community institutions. Europe's unification would not stop but would develop at intergovernmental level. The "institutional purists" (and small countries) must give this some thought.
Trust is something deserved. The president also stressed the importance he gave to the results of the "subsidiarity" working group, one of the first two to have handed in its conclusions to the Convention in plenary. Without going into the details of the procedure chosen by the group to ensure genuine control of the principle of subsidiarity (guarantee that the European Commission does not take initiatives that logically are not to be taken at European level but need settling at national or regional level, local even), he stressed the political significance of the group's conclusions, declaring: "there is a strong direction for national parliaments to be more involved in this control. It would be a major innovation that would, for the first time in the history of European construction, associate national parliaments directly in the European legislative process. It would be a breakthrough in European integration".
Some members of the Convention (see bulletin of 5 October, pp.4/5) and some Euro-MPs (see bulletin of 26 September, p.4) accused the procedure worked out by the working group of being too complicated (in contradiction with the general goal of simplification), and of encouraging national parliaments to multiply their reservations, with the risk of harming the Commission's right of initiative and slowing down the EU's legislative process, already fairly complex. But the group's chair, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, was right in stressing that it had been agreed that it would be up to the Commission to decide how to deal with any observations from national parliaments. If it sticks to its plan, the latter would follow its normal European legislative path before the EP and the Council. Some national parliamentarians wanted the reasoned reservations to have the effect of stopping the Commission in its tracks, but Mendez de Vigo convinced them to back off. This is significant as within the group the national parliamentarians were by far the most numerous, and confirms that dialogue allows us better to understand each other and to fell mistrust. The climate of trust is more important than a few procedural complications (that can be smoothed out by simplifying the current draft). Closer participation of national parliaments in EU activity does happen to be one of the Convention's priority objectives. (F.R.)