Brussels, 08/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Convention's work is hotting up. On Thursday and Friday the Praesidium will be preparing for the extremely rich 24/25 April plenary where Chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing will present draft articles on the CFSP and CFDP and the institutions so the 15/16 May plenary will be able to discuss the articles. The Praesidium may then have a preliminary review of all the discussed articles ahead of presenting the 30/31 May plenary with a full draft treaty. This plenary, along with those of 5/6 and 12/13 June, will be held over two full days and may be organised differently from in the past with the plenary being interrupted to enable discussions to be held among the various components and political parties on the Convention, for example, or in additional Praesidium meetings (see Europe of 5 April, p.5 on Klaus Hänsch's suggestions).
On 22 and 24 April, the Praesidium will draft articles on the institutions, while on 10/11 April it will work on articles on the CFSP and the CFDP, on which it has conclusions from the working groups chaired by Jean-Luc Dehaene and Michel Barnier. On Tuesday, spokesperson Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut told reporters that like with the draft articles on justice and home affairs, the Praesidium would be unveiling both general articles for the first part of the Constitution and measures for the second part (looking at all the EU's foreign action - trade policy, humanitarian aid, etc - along with the Common Foreign and Defence Policy).
On Thursday and Friday, the Praesidium will also:
Examine the legal bases of the legislative and executive measures. This is important and delicate because it involves generalising codecision and deciding what exceptions can be considered, exceptions foreseen when the Convention looked at the instruments at the EU's disposal (which were criticised by Convention Members from the European Parliament, Ed).
Draw up articles on Economic and Monetary Policy for the second part of the Constitution (Klaus Hänsch chaired the working group on governance).
Meyer-Landrut said that the budget procedure discussion group chaired by Henning Christophersen (see also page 6) has finished its work from which various points had emerged: the Financial Perspectives are to be incorporated in the Constitutional Treaty; in the framework of the annual budget procedure the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure will be scrapped; a slightly simplified form of codecision will be applied for adopting the budget (with, of course, the obligation to achieve results since it is an annual budget). A question that still has to be sorted out is what to do if the two wings of the budget authority fail to agree (Lena Hjelm-Wallen and Giis de Vries, representing the Swedish and Dutch governments, respectively, suggest that if conciliation does not achieve consensus then the position that involves the least expenditure should prevail, Ed).
The own resources discussion group chaired by Inigo Mendez de Vigo will be for the first time on 14 April and will aim to report back at the beginning of May.