Vienna, 09/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Austrian Presidency hopes to "unfreeze" the debate on the European Constitution and reach a consensus of all Twenty-Five on the formulation of "fundamental questions" for the future of Europe, according to the Austrian Minister for foreign affairs and President of the General Affairs Council, Ursula Plassnik. "The debate on the Constitution and the future of Europe is, at this moment, under a blanket of snow, waiting for the spring. We need, therefore, a climate change to bring it back to life and make it more concrete. We must go from self-analysis to self-therapy", said Ms Plassnik, speaking to a group of European journalists, in Vienna on 8 January. The European Constitution should be seen as just one aspect of the broader debate on the future of Europe, a debate which must go beyond the legal problems posed by the French and Dutch "no" to the constitutional treaty, said the minister. The Presidency would like the 25 Member States to start "formulating and listing the genuinely fundamental questions", which should also include those on the end point of European integration, the external borders of the EU, the institutional structures and democratic participation. In recent months, we have tried to "avoid" putting these questions, "but if we do not start to ask these questions now, how are we going to give the required responses, when the time comes?", Ms Plassnik explained.
Nonetheless, Ursula Plassnik went on to state that it would be unrealistic to expect "miracles" of the Austrian Presidency, which has not yet decided how to steer and organised this debate, and does not know what concrete results can be expected between now and the European Council of 15 and 16 June. "The debate has been opened. The fact that more and more proposals have been launched from all quarters (such as the one by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to annex a social protocol to the draft Constitution) is, for my money, an indication that in the Member States, there is the willingness to have this discussion. In the next few months, we will see where this will lead us. At this stage, it is impossible to say how the debate will unfold and what result we can expect. It does not all depend on the Presidency. It has no magic potion". Mme Plassnik did, however, indicate that Vienna would act on three levels: -to commit to a "broader European conversation" with the citizens, the Member States, the European institutions, the national parliaments and intellectuals; -make tangible and concrete progress in the socio-economic dossiers and those pertaining to security, which directly affect the "European model of life" and the day-to-day interests of the citizen; -improve the visibility of the EU and better explain to the citizens what the EU does and why it does it.
The enlargement policy will, without a doubt, be part of the debate on the future of Europe "and, in this context, I am also expecting a discussion on the borders of Europe", said Ms Plassnik. We are aware that when it decided to grant the status of candidate country to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the European Council of December 2005 agreed to hold a substantial debate on the future enlargement strategy in 2006. This debate should get under way during the first half of the year.
In the meantime, the Austrian Vice-Chancellor (and Minister for transport, innovation and technology) Hubert Gorbach called for the text of the European Constitution to be fundamentally modified and re-written in order to reinforce the principle of subsidiarity to the benefit of the regions and to renationalise certain Community policies, starting with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). "The EU has reached a geographic and institutional size which is no longer manageable with the resources available. This will clearly cause irritation and scepticism on the part of the citizens. For this reason, we need an institutional restructuring and a substantial reformulation of the European Union, together with a renationalisation of certain Community policies. The EU should only regulate where this will bring a supra-national added value. We should accord greater importance to the principle of subsidiarity", Mr Gorbach told the same group of European journalists, in Vienna on 8 January. "If we are going to be able to bring these changes in, we will need a new text for the Constitution", he stressed. The text which was rejected by the French and the Dutch contains "a number of good ideas, which should be kept" (such as reinforcing the powers of the European Parliament), but the division of competences between the Member States and the EU should be completely revised in order to give more of a priority to the principle of subsidiarity, said Mr Gorbach, who wants a "Europe of the Regions". This new division will bring the decision-making closer to the citizens and would thus help to re-establish their confidence in the EU, added the Vice-Chancellor, who is a member of the BZÖ, the new political movement created by former members of the FPÖ, the coalition partner of Wolfgang Schüssel's ÖVP). It is worth noting that legislative elections are due to take place in Austria this autumn.