It is almost a commonplace to note that in September, EU priorities will focus on preparing for the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) that will be approving the Constitutional Treaty drawn up by the Convention. Barely four or five weeks remain for this since the IGC will open on 4 October, and any postponement would augur very ill indeed. The success of the IGC hangs on two closely linked criteria - respecting deadlines and accepting the outcome of the Convention. If negotiations re-open on all the draft text submitted to the Presidency of the European Council on 18 July by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, each government will be making national demands and the EU will slide into petty, desperate horsetrading and we know what the outcome of that would be - a repeat of the past two failed GCS.
The Rome Statement that VGE, Jean-Luc Dehaene and Giuliano Amato sent along with the draft Constitution on 18 July effectively resumes (with the nobility of spirit) the situation and requirements and I think it is regrettable that with the arrival of the summer holidays it passed virtually unnoticed. It resumes the significance and the scope of the draft in thirty or so lines which, in my view, all Europeans should be informed about since via a referendum or in other ways, they will be called to give their views of the Constitution. It should also be disseminated in schools. The statement sets out the deadline for approving the Constitutional Treaty (December 2003) and signing it (9 May 2004) and makes formal request of the Italian Presidency of the IGC that it keeps the text as it is since challenging it in any way, even partially, would lead to failure (see the full Rome Statement in Europe of 19 July, page 5).
VGE's first rule. In an interview with Andrea Bonanni of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the Convention Chairman stated, clarified and fleshed out his position, sometimes in very vigorous terms that will not fail to displease some people. On the subject, which he sees as fundamental, of not re-launching debate on issues that have won consensus in the Convention, VGE suggested a radical rule for the President of the IGC, Silvio Berlusconi, namely that he should refuse to discuss amendments already presented to, and rejected by, the Convention. What if the Commission submits the improvements and changes announced by the Commission President (see this column of 18 July and EUROPE of 28 August, p.2, and 29 August, p.2)? VGE replied that his advice to Berlusconi was to reject them because debate into the most controversial aspects has already been held by the Convention so the draft text is a collection of the most advanced compromises possible. Any new discussions would lead to a retreat on the whole draft, he said.
People rejecting the Convention's draft want to “leave” the European Union. The second strong point made by VGE which will send shivers down the spines of some politicians concerns potential failure to ratify the Constitutional Treaty by any of the 25 countries that sign it. His legal considerations, already explained in this column on several occasions, have not changed. This would be a serious political problem that governments will not be able to duck but which it was not the Convention's role to discuss. VGE added a few comments to this view. He sees the Commission's proposal in the Penelope project (to incorporate a rule in the Constitutional Treaty excluding from the EU countries which fail to ratify the new Treaty) as a mistake because it could lead to a climate of mutual hostility, right now, between Member States. But he added that he could not be sure that one or two countries would refuse to ratify the Constitutional Treat. If that happened, he said, the country or countries in question would be questioning their decision to be part of a united Europe and would have to accept the consequences. If they say no, they want to leave. VGE pointed out that in the draft Constitution, any country is free to leave the EU with in honourable conditions.
Making the best use of the Convention's outcome. I return to my starting point - the need for the Italian Presidency to accept its responsibility immediately, this month. It clearly cannot prevent IGC participants (the governments and the Commission) from expressing their views. But it should sound out their plans in advance in order to be able to play its role as intermediary and it should start preparing the two or three compromises that might prove necessary. This is a sensitive and tough task and the Presidency would be making a mistake if it failed to use all the available skills and structures, particularly the heritage of knowledge and experience accumulated by the Convention. Convention Members have finished their official duties, of course, and it is now for the IGC to take the stage. But it would be madness (I can find no other word to describe it) to neglect what has been achieved by sixteen uninterrupted months of reflection and debate, initiative and discussions. There have also been countless contributions from outside the Convention, often highly competent. The long history of the European project had never experienced anything like it. National parliaments had never been as closely linked to EU affairs (and this lack in the past sometimes led to misunderstandings and rivalry with EU institutions with costly consequences), not to mention the authorities and politicians of acceding countries who were directly involved in the debates about tomorrow's Europe. Would one want to waste this heritage?
This is how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing described his experience of chairing the Convention. Chairing the Convention was an incomparable intellectual challenge. For sixteen months I lived like a student, taking the train to Brussels almost every day, abandoning my private life and attempting to make progress in this domain or that, talking with heads of state to ensure I got better clarification of the various aspects of my work, he said. We should not forget that the man who expressed these views was in the past a mover and shaker behind the creation of the European Council and is considered a founding father of the single currency, a man who therefore had earned his place in the history of Europe and who all the same sees chairing the Convention as being an irreplaceable experience. Any doubts and perplexities that could be expressed at the IGC have already been analysed and discussed by the Convention; any possible solutions to institutional problems have already been taken into consideration. The Convention Presidium has now been broken up but its members have not lost their memories, particularly the Chairman and the two Vice-Chairs, who have made direct references placing themselves at the disposal of the Presidency of the IGC to explain the ins and outs of the Convention's choices and the way various solutions were accepted or rejected. Moreover, the officials who worked in the Convention's Secretariat have not vanished into thin air - they remain at the disposal of the institutions along with a rich library of documentation for which the time has not yet come to be whisked off to the archives of the Florence University Institute (or elsewhere).
Two areas to be fine-tuned. This is how I see the Presidency's work during the month of September - contacting the 25 heads of state and the European Commission; explaining that the IGC's objective is to approve the current draft and not to renegotiate it; and take note of the handful of areas which must be considered all the same as likely to be discussed, and prepare appropriate solutions, in cooperation with the Commission and the European Parliament. I have already noted in this column that in my view, there are basically two areas of the current draft that are liable to be debate, namely:
- fine-tuning of balance in the new qualified majority voting system for the Council. The “double majority” system (of states and population) must not be challenged but reasonable compensation can be considered for Spain and Poland to ensure that they are not penalised in 2009 with the dropping of the Nice mechanism (which is more favourable to them). I don't see this as a matter to be negotiated within the IGC in plenary but prepared in advance and submitted to the IGC simply for approval;
- the final composition of the European Commission after the first five years of the unfortunate Nice compromise. The more I consider this, the more I believe the solution decided upon by the Convention fails to match the vision and intentions of its Chairman and it was accepted by VGE in the hope of never being applied as it is but to be revised by 2009, the year it is scheduled to come into force. So why not simply abandon the idea of incorporating over-detailed and rigid rules in the Constitution and give greater flexibility to the European Council and the other institutions, which would have five years to decide in the light of experience? I will return next week to this crucial aspect of the future institutional set-up.
The Italian Presidency must not act alone. To conclude, the big question is whether the Italian Presidency will be capable of dealing with this task in the next few weeks which requires such dedication. In my view it is possible as long as the Presidency doesn't think it can act alone but agrees to get other institutions and leading Convention politicians on board. I will write about thin in tomorrow's column. (F.R)