Brussels, 28/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is prepared to play an active part in the preparatory work on the practical implementation of the Lisbon Treaty as from 1 January 2009. To this end, the constitutional affairs committee has appointed Jean-Luc Dehaene (EPP-ED, Belgium) as rapporteur on this issue, which will certainly take place during this year of considerable political importance. The text of the treaty is not sufficiently clear and/or exhaustive on how several institutional innovations are meant to work. Member states and Community institutions will have to agree on several crucial subjects by the end of the year. These subjects include the exact remit of the future president of the European Council and its relations with the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy (HR), the rotating presidency for other Council groupings, and competencies and functional modalities for the “European external action service”. The Council and the Commission have already begun discussions that they want to keep discreet however, in an effort to prevent creating further complications in the Lisbon Treaty ratification process - at least until the Irish referendum which is likely to take place in June. Mr Dehaene informed EUROPE on 28 February that “it is important that the European Parliament also does its work and appropriately prepares for this work on implementing the treaty”. The presidency of the EU is right to keep a low profile on this dossier so as “not to create the impression of ratification being a simple formality” but remaining discreet does not mean that the EP is kept on the sidelines, emphasised the former Belgian prime minister. He insisted that “at some stage they will need concertation between the three institutions. The EP not participating in this preparation is unimaginable”.
Mr Dehaene intends to present a “political report” on the impact of the main institutional innovations, particularly the president of the European Council and the HR. What will be their respective competencies? What will be the relationship with the president of the European Commission? The report will also cover the calendar for appointing the three future leaders of the EU “Troika”. Two of these three leaders (the president of the European Council and the HR) will be nominated by the end of the year, so that they can take up their posts on 1 January 2009. The presidents of the European Commission and the European Parliament, however, will not be appointed till after the June 2009 European elections. This disparity poses a problem of political coherency and balance, which Mr Dehaene believes could have been avoided. This is why the president of the constitutional affairs committee, Jo Leinen, suggested nominating the four leaders - president of the European Council, Commission president and president of the EP - as part of a “package” but only after the 2009 European elections (EUROPE 9600). Dehaene does not want to pre-empt the debate on this question, but acknowledged that there was a problem involving the “political and regional balance and the balance between the big and small countries, which will be important when these nominations are made. It would have been easier to attain this balance if we had proceeded to these three nominations after the European elections. But this is not the case and we now have to see how the problem can be resolved”. Mr Dehaene is refusing to mention any possible candidates but asked about the possible candidacy of Tony Blair, Dehaene commented: “the president of the European Council should be someone we know will participate in all aspects of the EU” (reference to British opt-outs). “This appears to me to be important and even essential if we want this function to have some importance”.
Mr Dehaene appealed for the remit of the future EU troika to be precisely worked out. He affirmed that “it is clear that the person is the role. The kind of person we appoint is as important as the treaty provisions”. Although the treaty is not entirely clear about the respective competencies, “negotiators want the treaty to go in a certain direction and it will be necessary to prevent people getting nominated (to key roles) going in a direction that is not the one indicated by the treaty”, explained the rapporteur. “For example, it is obvious that the treaty did not want to create a 'president of Europe' but only a 'president of the European Council'. This will have to be taken into account when the exact remit of the president of the European Council is defined”. Mr Dehaene's report does not deal with technical subjects such as the implications of the treaty on budget or committee procedures. Neither will it deal with the European external action service (which will be the subject of a special report by Elmar Brok) or the impact of the new treaty on EP reform (on which a specific working group chaired by Dagmar Roth-Behrendt is currently working). Finally, Mr Dehaene's report does not tackle three subjects that the rapporteur believes should be tackled in the future: the role of the EP in strengthened cooperation, treaty revision, and decisions on reducing the number of European commissioners as from 2014. (H.B.)