Brussels, 09/07/2003 (Agence Europe) - On 7 July, the EP's Committee on Constitutional Affairs chaired by Giorgio Napolitano discussed the draft report on the draft treaty establishing the European Constitution and on the convening of the IGC, entrusted to MEPs José-Maria Gil Robles (EPP-ED, Spain) and Dimitri Tsatsos (PES, Greece). Mr Gil-Robles proposed a "tight and strict" timetable whereby the first draft of the report would be for mid-August, which would allow the report to be adopted during the plenary of 25 September before the IGC is convened. According to Mr Tsatsos, "this report will become an important interpretation document" for the draft constitutional treaty, since it should identify the areas where there is satisfactory progress and those which need to be gone into more deeply. One of the controversial points is that regarding the role of a future stable president of the European Council. José-Maria Gil-Robles insists that this should be a president in the "British 'chairman' sense". Also, he agrees with Romano Prodi in saying that the distinction between Commissioners with or without voting rights would damage the Commission's "political legitimacy".
The result of the Convention is "qualitatively speaking", better than what the traditional way of preparing an IGC could achieve, British Liberal Andrew Duff states, saying that the final result will necessarily be less good if the IGC undoes the work carried out by the Convention. Mr Duff insisted on the need for the future European Foreign Minister to be a member of the Commission and not to be a "free electron". Luxembourg Socialist Jacques Poos is not present in the areas covered by the second and third pillars. Mr Poos sees as a "real failing" the fact that the Community method is not extended to the Eurogroup, while the absence of convergence of Member State economic policies is one of the causes of the gap in growth between Europe and the United States.
The result of the Convention is a "red line" beyond which it is impossible to go back, affirms Social Democrat Jo Leinen, mainly concerned about maintaining the right of veto. "If kept, it would be necessary to reform from 2005-2006 on", Mr Leinen warned. In his view, the IGC could be "short and powerful" and complete its work end December. On this subject, Mr Leinen invited the parliamentarians not to "punish" the Italian Presidency by preventing it from concluding the work on the future Constitution (an allusion to the incidents last Wednesday in Strasbourg). "The IGC must begin and end as soon as possible, at best in December, otherwise there is a real risk of falling back", Italian Green member Monica Frassoni warned. By October, there must be a decision on the degree of European Parliament participation. "We cannot be content with the role of observer or with just being kept informed", Ms Frassoni warned, evoking the possibility of setting in place an interinstitutional delegation of two or three MEPs present at the IGC. Furthermore, it is necessary to foresee "a reasonable time limit for keeping the citizens informed" with a view to referendums on the draft constitutional treaty, Dutch Socialist Max Van den Berg said, which is why it is necessary to complete the text by the end of the year. A reasonable date compared to the forecast made by Italy, which calculated the time for translation of the constitutional treaty as four months (see EUROPE of 26 June, p.6).
Giorgio Napolitano (DS), Chair of the Parliamentary Committee, concluded by calling upon his colleagues for a "demanding" report, not too risky, not too cautious. He mainly recalled that "the constitutional committee has always been against the idea of a full-time President of the European Council". Deploring the fact that the function has not been sufficiently well defined in the text that is on the table, he asks: "What sort of president would preside four meetings per year? What would he do the other 360 days of the year?" As for the number of Commissioners, he felt that this was the only point where the Treaty of Nice was best, since it allowed time for reflection until 2009.