Romano Prodi's idea. The President of the European Commission has come out with a new idea for the important role of the possible future European Congress. He informed Heads of Government about his idea on Wednesday in Athens during discussions on EU institutional reform with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (see this section 18 April). VGE is keen on this body, which could be a way of bringing MEPs and parliamentarians from all Member States together, possibly providing the window for viewing the close cooperation between the EP and national parliamentarians who are already working at the Convention and which everyone is talking about. The setting up of a congress will obviously be contained in drafts for institutional reform that the President is currently developing and which has raised a number of reservations. It is in this context that Romano Prodi came up with his suggestion.
Initially, he stressed that the object of the reform was institutional simplification, "our general line consists in avoiding the creation of new institutions"…"nevertheless,, we also want greater efficiency. For example, it is clear that each decision to submit for ratification from 25 Parliaments or more (for the future amendment of the institutional treaty) is in danger of being so complicated that it could become impossible in practice. In similar cases, we could ask whether it were not opportune to replace the ratification procedures by decisions taken at an Assembly composed of representatives of the EP and national parliaments". This formula would not be applied to radical amendments of the treaty but could be used in financial provisions or certain institutional changes.
Congress would therefore be able to facilitate Community life while respecting democratic principles. Certainly, for some national parliaments it would be a loss of powers, as, with ratification, each Parliament would be able to oppose an amendment of the treaty of which they possible disapprove, whereas ratification confined to the Congress would mean the overall result would be de final. But safeguard measures could be introduced to respect national autonomies. This is a possible option that the Convention could at least explore when it discusses the European Congress draft, which VGE will soon be proposing.
The risk of reopening IGC negotiations. In order to complete my section of 18 April, I will discuss the Convention calendar. Officially, the issue is resolved: the calendar is the same as that planned at the outset. VGE confirmed that the draft constitutional treaty would be ready for the Summit of Salonika on 20 June. Everyone is happy about it, come what may!
But everything is not quite that simple. I don't think that, while Romano Prodi was calling for the calendar to be respected, he was inadvertently suggesting greater flexibility so that the final result meets expectations. The Commission President told the Summit, "We can imagine that by the end of June, the Convention will have finished its work on part I of the Constitutions and the provisions in part II, which need rewriting. As for the other provisions of part II that need simplifying and adapting to the new institutional system, we will be able to call on the Convention to finish its work by special procedure by the end of September."
The rigidity regarding the calendar undoubtedly responds to the valid and understanding intention of not creating any slack and keeping up the pressure on Convention members. The Greek Presidency particularly wants the draft Constitution to be ready before its office comes to an end and the Italian Presidency wants to open the intergovernmental conference as quickly as possible in order to finish the constitutional treaty in December, in other words, a new "treaty of Rome". This is all well and good but if things don't turn out as planned it could be fatal! There is a danger that in order to respect the deadline, the Convention will not be able to propose a single draft that has consensus and that it will have to look at a number of other options on the important chapters. Negotiation will therefore begin again at the IGC, on an intergovernmental level and wary governments will not have to worry about the political and psychological difficulties of rejecting the Convention's overall draft, by being able to chose between different drafts. This would be a disaster. Keeping up the pressure and working fast, is good but three months delay is preferable to a draft that leaves too many issues pending. If at the expiry of the deadline of 30 June the draft is still not ready in its final format, an additional time limit should not be excluded.
Would the entry into force of the Constitution, in order to avoid the refusal of ratification by a single country bring the whole house down? It's not by hiding a problem that we find the answer. (F.R.)