Brussels, 11/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The idea put forward by "powerful political forces" that an EU Council President could hold office for five year is "bad from every point of view" and "needs to be resisted if the institutional framework of the European Union is to avoid serious, and perhaps irreparable damage". Such is the view expressed in the address by Peter Sutherland (former European Competition Commissioner and former Director General of GATT) during the meeting, on 11 October in Brussels, of the advisory council of The European Policy Centre think tank founded by Stanley Crossick. The idea "represents the apotheosis of the intergovernmental tendency", Mr Sutherland pointed out with indignation, asking, on the subject of such a president: "what precisely will he do?". He goes on to explain the perplexity he feels: "Presumably the intention is that his function will be supported by new bureaucratic structures (…). Perhaps we will end up with two EU delegations in foreign capitals (one from the Council and the other the Commission) (…). This idea is either premature or superfluous. Premature in the sense that it could only work if there is a strong degree of consensus about moving towards a more cohesive voice for Europe. Yet it is favoured precisely by those who reject the most effective route towards that objective, namely to build on the achievements of the Commission (…). Superfluous, in the sense that, if implemented without clarity about the need for greater cohesiveness, the function will merely add to the present institutional confusion". The result, in his view, is that one could find oneself in a situation similar to that of France since the Vth Republic under General de Gaulle, with a President of the Commission who acts as a sort of "Prime Minister" of the European President, with a President of the Council and a President of the Commission "competing with each other to provide the phone number that Dr Kissinger's successors will hopefully call". Mr Sutherland continued saying: "It will inevitably be seen as a move to reinforce the role of larger Member States within the Union and is clearly designed to give the heavy hand of intergovernmentalism primacy over the subtlety of what Monnet imagined. And it will inevitably place an emphasis on the creation of ad hoc alliances in the Council without the necessary checks and balances of the current system".
At the same time, Mr Sutherland recognises that Council reform is necessary. Perhaps, he said, through "interaction of a triumvirate of Member States in the Presidency for a longer period" and through the decision (even if the current trend seems not to be along these lines) to make "Mr Solana or his successor … attend Commission meetings as of right and, preferably, as a Commissioner".
On the same occasion, the Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, Antonio Vitorino, who chairs the working group at the European Convention on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, noted that, at the Convention, all Member States "do not have the same state of mind". Some take it "very seriously", but these are not necessarily the most pro-European, he said. One must not underestimate the "dynamic" of the Convention, which is not a "constituent assembly", but is part of a "constituent process", warned Mr Vitorino, who recalled that, when the Convention on the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (of which he was a member) had presented its Charter to the European Council in Biarritz, President Chirac had told his colleagues that one could "take or leave" the text. Regarding the work of the Convention chaired by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Mr Vitorino does not agree with those who consider the institutions should be discussed only at the end of the exercise: some conclusions of the working groups of the Convention have institutional consequences, he recalled. He remarked in passing that the working group on economic governance has unfortunately "a very low ambition level". The European Commission will present its second communication to the Convention, confirmed Mr Vitorino, who assured: "it will come soon, we are waiting for better anticyclonic conditions". In his view, the current discussion is excessively dominated by the "power struggle" between institutions, while the fundamental problem is that of majority vote in Council. Finally, speaking personally, Mr Vitorino avowed that he was "not totally in favour" of the election of the president of the Commission by the European Parliament, even if he did see some advantages to it. Thus, he warns, one must prevent the Commission from becoming "hostage" to the Parliament without a "margin of manoeuvre as an independent institution". The current Commission does not respond to partisan reasoning, it is "a coalition" between personalities of different tendencies, he stressed.