The General Affairs Council (GAC), composed of the Foreign Ministers of the fifteen member countries of the EU, reached a unanimous compromise on the composition and funding of the Convention for the institutional reforms of the Union which will begin its work on 28 February. The GAC thus put an end to the dispute over the status of the president and vice-presidents of the Convention, by ruling that the President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Vice-Presidents Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene will for all intents and purposes be considered representatives of the European Council, thus giving free rein to the right/duty of each government to designate its own representative to the Convention. The question of how to interpret the points of the Laeken Declaration that refer to the Convention had been raised by Holland and Sweden, with particular regard to the decision of the Italian government to nominate Deputy Premier Gianfranco Fini as Italy’s representative to the Convention in addition to Giuliano Amato, already designated by the Summit of Heads of State. The GAC further confirmed the agreement reached at the level of Permanent Representatives for the Convention’s budget: 10.5 million Euros will be allocated to its running costs, while Giscard, Amato and Dehaene will each receive a daily emolument of respectively 1000, 750 and 200 Euros, to which travel expenses will be added. In spite of what was decided by the Council, it will probably be necessary to supplement the budget by a further allocation of 4 or 5 million Euros.
