Brussels, 30/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was congratulated by many Convention Members for winning the Charlemagne Prize, on Friday opened the Convention's plenary session with a brief presentation of all of the texts of the draft Constitutional Treaty. He reiterated that the Praesidium had not proposed a new version of the institutional part, and that he had not yet managed to come to an agreement on the qualified majority voting modalities at Council. Having stressed the fact that the Charter's inclusion constituted a notable progress in itself, Mr Giscard d'Estaing explained, with reference to the third part, that "we were not asked to review the substance of the policies", but that the Praesidium was still proposing that the number of cases put to qualified majority voting be doubled, which means making the legislative procedure into "the general law procedure".
As for next week's work, the President of the European Convention indicated that Wednesday 4 June would principally be dedicated to meetings between himself and the two Vice-Presidents, Jean-Luc Dehaene and Giuliano Amato, and each of the four component parts of the Convention. These meetings will focus mainly on the institutions, and will allow the Praesidium to present an amended text. On Thursday 5 June, the discussion in plenary will centre on the draft Treaty, apart from the section on the institutions, which will be examined on Friday 6 June, giving Convention Members the time to study the revised version, which they will have received the day before.
After this presentation; British MP David Heathcoat-Amory and Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde joined Mr Giscard d'Estaing on the stage to present him with an "alternative proposal" draft Treaty. Mr Heathcoat-Amory requested that this text be annexed to the report to be presented by President Giscard d'Estaing to the European Council on 20 June. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing replied that the text would be examined by the secretariat, that it could be circulated to the other Convention Members and added: "if it gets enough votes, it will be taken into account".
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing then opened the debate on reinforced co-operation, saying that it was a question of "freeing up the paths which will allow European to make progress", while respecting the liberty of certain States not to take part in certain activities. "We have received a lot of amendments (…) but there is one which we cannot accept", he said, addressing British Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, who is opposed to reinforced co-operation, because rejecting it "would be closing off one path of progress".
Slightly later, Mr Duff retorted that he sees "a risk of institutional split" and "a threat to the Union's integrity" in reinforced co-operation. "If our aim is really a Constitution for the Union and if we really want to extend qualified majority voting (…) we must remain coherent and avoid variable geometry", he added.
Like French MP Pierre Lequiller or Polish MP Jozef Olesky, the vast majority of Convention Members are in favour of keeping this option for a group of States to go forward together when not all wish to. Several members, such as Greek MP Marietta Giannakou-Koutsikou and Dutch MP Frans Timmermans insisted that the Commission and the European Parliament should be involved in the implementation of any reinforced co-operation. Mr Timmermans spoke in favour of a threshold of eight Member States for reinforced co-operation, as proposed by the Praesidium (one-third of Member States).
Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde (JuniB) got behind Mr Duff for a variety of reasons, as he feels that reinforced co-operation could divide Europe. He felt that they should require unanimity to authorise them.
"Nobody wants a paralysed European Union, and this is the point of reinforced co-operation", acknowledged British minister Peter Hain, who did however express reservations on the use of such a mechanism for foreign policy and defence.
Finnish MP Kimmo Kiljunen, who welcomed the reference to the Enlightenment in the preamble proposed by the Praesidium, stressed the fact that reinforced co-operation should remain open to all Member States. Together with other Convention Members, he stated his view that the threshold should be raised to half the Member States, in order to avoid "fragmentation" of the Union. "Reinforced co-operation are indispensable to the progress of European integration", declared French Senator Hubert Haenel, who found the Praesidium's proposal satisfactory for foreign policy and defence, but felt that, for other policies, the vetos held by the Commission and Parliament and the qualified majority granted to the Council represent "three excessive security bolts".
The German Foreign Affairs Minister, Joschka Fischer said that the "Presidium draft goes in the right direction" but "the Commission must have more say". For Fischer, the threshold must not be fixed at too high a level. On the other hand, he believes it "disappointing" that the proposals on common foreign and security policy will be subject to further qualified majority demands. Commissioner Michel Barnier said that he shared the opinion of Mr Fischer on extending the scope for additional strengthened cooperation in defence. As opposed to Hubert Haenel, who considered that strengthened cooperation was crucial to operational aspects of police and legal cooperation, Commissioner Antonio Vitorino declared that this would not help simplification.