Brussels, 18/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - Drawing his conclusions from the sixteenth plenary session of the European Convention, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing announced that the provision proposed by the Presidium on the Union's legal instruments (draft articles 24 to 33) was "generally approved of". He noted, however, that the Presidium will have to examine the proposal to bring in an "organic laws" category for issues of a constitutional nature. The generalisation of the codecision procedure, which has been renamed "legislative procedure", has consensus, but exceptions will have to be reviewed during work on the second part of the future Constitutional treaty, he said, acknowledging the validity of Elena Paciotti's comment, who stressed that "a law cannot be adopted by the Council working alone". Another formulation should be found for acts taken by the Council in the field of police and legal co-operation. Talking of delegated acts, Mr Giscard d'Estaing noted that "the text was better received" and, answering criticism on articles 29 (foreign policy), 30 (defence), and 31 (justice and home affairs), he said that these articles "are there to visualise getting rid of the pillars" and to indicate that there are different procedures. "We will have to decide on their usefulness once our work is finished", he added.
As to the protocol on subsidiarity, President Giscard d'Estaing noted firstly that the transmission of the annual Commission report on respecting subsidiarity did not pose any problems. On the subject of the threshold for the Commission to re-examine its proposal in the framework of the new early warning mechanism, he said he felt that there was consensus for a threshold of one-third which could apply, taking into account the bicameral system and the equality between States, giving "two votes" to each. "We are going to work on this idea", said Mr Giscard d'Estaing, having observed that the "red card" (the threshold of two-thirds of national parliaments raised by Gisele Stuart) "had received little support", and was a matter for "academic debate", as Council and Parliament had no wish to push a proposal that came up against such strong opposition. He also re-confirmed that any possible recourse to the regions would have to go either via the Committee of the Regions or national governments.
On the subject of the protocol on the role for national parliaments, Mr Giscard d'Estaing stressed above all the ground-breaking nature of their involvement in the legislative procedure via monitoring of subsidiarity. He spoke of his wishes for strengthened inter-parliamentary co-operation. "We cannot give COSAC an institutional role", he added however, before underlining the importance, when discussing articles on the democratic life of the Union, of raising the need for a "central body" where European and national representatives could meet. EUROPE will come back on this session's discussions.
At the end of the day's work, Mr Giscard d'Estaing reminded his audience that the additional session on 25 March would allow them to finish looking at the articles on the values and objectives of the Union, and that the following one (3 and 4 April) would provide the opportunity to discuss draft articles on financing the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, which were presented to yesterday's plenary (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.7). When questioned by William Abitbol on the possibility of holding the plenary session of 15 and 16 May in Strasbourg, President Giscard d'Estaing pointed out that under the Laeken Declaration, all meetings of the Convention are held in Brussels. Mr Abitbol commented that the Convention meeting of Thursday 15 March coincides with a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the first one with observers from the future Member States. The Mayor of Strasbourg, Fabienne Keller, has also written to the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, and to Mr Giscard d'Estaing, on the same subject.