Presidential announcements. I admit it: the meeting between European and national parliamentarians from Member States on “the future of Europe” obtained results that went beyond what I predicted at the beginning of the week, while at the same time confirming many of divergences. It would have been ingenuous to have expected common responses to questions such as Europe's borders, the economic and social model and the funding of the future EU. Positions expressed, however, were often instructive, even when they diverged. An additional element enriched the discussion: Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission used this occasion to make some important announcements. Therefore, President Barroso announced that the Commission would now send national parliaments all its legislative proposals at the same time as it sent them to the European Parliament. Chancellor Schüssel also made known his intentions for the June Summit which he himself will be chairing. He will be calling on Heads of Government to define the concept of “capacity absorption” of the EU with regard to future enlargement and begin working on the dossier for common crisis management (natural disasters, terrorist attacks etc.) on the basis of the Barnier report. He will also be looking at whether the draft Constitution can be effectively re-launched before the end of 2007 or in 2008 and if a new system of “own resources” should be negotiated in 2008/09 for application in 2014.
Some essential conclusions. To provide an overview of the inter-parliamentary meeting, the reader should go back to many of the passionate pages of our bulletin yesterday, which focused on this aspect. I'll just make a few essential conclusions.
these meetings will take on a permanent character. A second meeting will take place in December, others will follow. The objective is not to reach common conclusions (opposed to what the European Parliament initially envisaged) as each parliament has to maintain it autonomy. The alignment of all national parliaments on uniform positions is unthinkable. But the dialogue will continue and its effectiveness has already been widely proved by the Convention on the Constitutional Treaty. Discussing together, putting forward different positions and understanding each other better is more useful and more democratic than trying to push forward Europe by getting a majority at any cost.
One of the four groups that met on Monday will now become permanent - the group on EU financial resources. Common discussion in this respect is crucial, because it is a very sensitive area (also in regard to public opinion) and essentially within the remit of national parliaments, which want it to be inserted into the process beginning in 2008 for analysing and making decisions. Chancellor Schüssel underlined that there were many options in this area and the report from the President of this group (Lord Grenfell from the British House of Lords) confirms this.
the bulk of parliamentarians want to keep the draft constitution and several of them stressed how the absence of a Constitutional Treaty is harmful to citizens (Carnero Gonzalez spoke about the “price to pay for not having a constitution). Several parliamentarians (Poland, Czech Republic) were more supportive of the thesis purporting that “the Constitution is dead”.
All parliamentarians considered that they should not wait for the constitutional re-launch to take concrete and courageous measures for re-launching Europe and proving to citizens that Community action is to their benefit. But at the same time several speakers denounced moves to replace the overall constitutional treaty with limited specific actions in a “Europe of projects” as an alternative to the overall constitution.
Opinions diverged radically on future enlargement. Some believed that accession had to continue unabated; while others thought (more of them, at a glance) it necessary to have a “lengthy pause” and denounced the danger of “denuding the European project”.
Ideas appear quite diverse and sometimes confused on the European social model. Some believed that there were three of social models, others, five, while several said that this model could be defined by a number of principles (solidarity, social justice, gender equality) which are in reality common to several countries outside the EU. Clarification of this dossier in a single “meeting” is impossible.
(F.R.)