Are the modifications being discussed in the Convention an adequate response to the challenges facing the Union in the coming decade?

Sciences politiques | 9 pages | 05-03-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

In December 2001, the fifteen European leaders, gathered in Laeken, agreed to set a Convention on the future of Europe. According to their own words, Europe was at a crossroads and needed change, in order to become more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. There was widespread concern that, with enlargement looming, the institutional setting would soon prove unmanageable. The declaration adopted at Laeken also insisted that three other basic challenges had to be addressed: how to bring citizens closer to the European design and the European institutions, how to organise politics and the European political area in an enlarged Union and how to develop the Union into a stabilising factor and a model in the new, multipolar world. In order to address these questions, the declaration put a number of specific questions to the Convention. The Convention would draw up a final document in preparation for the 2004 IGC: according to the Laeken declaration, a Constitution was only something for the remote future. The Convention would meet in Brussels, all its discussions and official documents would be in the public domain. The leaders agreed on the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as chairman of the Convention. There would be representatives of the heads of states or governments, of national parliaments, of the European Parliament and of the Commission. Accession countries were also associated with the talks. After 16 months, a draft treaty was handed to the Italian presidency on the 18th of July, 2003. The task was not easy but a consensus had been reached. After that, an Intergovernmental conference was opened in October 2003, and after the talks had collapsed in December, the final draft constitutional treaty was adopted in Brussels on the 18th of June, 2004.

In France, the debate over the findings of the Treaty has been dominated by questions about the supposed neo-liberalism of the Treaty. In the UK, national sovereignty and concerns over changes in industrial law have been the main topics. Little has been said of the capacity of the new treaty to deliver a better functioning Union and to help to face the challenges identified at Laeken. We will look here in detail at the proposals of the treaty, and argue that even if changes are modest, the text brings a serious improvement to the Nice treaty.

We shall examine the response to the main issues put to the Convention by the Laeken declaration: the division of competence in the European Union, the simplification of the Union's instruments, the question of democracy, transparency and efficiency, and finally the question of the architecture of the constitutional treaty ...

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