In the Union 46 articles ” “

A new name for the European Union; dual citizenship, national and European, for citizens resident in the member states; a “congress of peoples” with the participation of national parliaments; the provision of a system of “pre-alert” of national parliaments for those legislative acts of the Union that involve the principle of subsidiarity; and the recognized option for any member state to withdraw from the EU if it so chooses. These are some of the main innovations contained in the “preliminary outline of the constitutional treaty”, which was presented by the president of the Convention on the future of Europe, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, to the plenary session held in Brussels on 28 and 29 October. The draft was prepared by the Convention’s select ruling body, its Presidium, and, as Giscard explained, is limited to defining in broad outline the contents of what will be the future European constitution, i.e. lays down “the place that the individual questions will have in the text”. According to this outline, the treaty will consist of three parts. The first part will be the constitution proper: 46 articles to define the objectives of the Union, the rights of citizens, the Union’s functions and institutions, the instruments and procedures for putting into practice the Union’s decisions, its funding systems, international relations, and the conditions for joining the Union and withdrawing from it. The second part of the treaty will contain the necessary provisions to implement the policies of the Union, taken over from the existing treaties. The third and last part of the future treaty will contain the transitional and final provisions to “guarantee the Union’s juridical continuity”. Objectives and values. Article 1 defines the objectives of the EU: “A union of European States that preserve their own national identity, that closely coordinate their policies at the European level and that administer some common responsibilities according to the federal model”. Article 2 of the draft treaty lists “the values of the Union: human dignity, fundamental rights, democracy, State of law, tolerance, respect for international obligations and law”. It could be in this article, or in the preamble to the Treaty, that a reference to the Christian heritage of Europe could be included. Other questions left open by the draft treaty and deferred to discussion in the plenary assembly include, not least, the name of the Europe of the future. The Convention will have to choose between the traditional names of “European Community” or “European Union” and other names: “United States of Europe”, as one of the founding fathers, Jean Monnet, would have preferred, or “United Europe”, as Giscard d’Estaing himself would prefer. The Charter of the fundamental rights of the European Union, adopted in Nice in December 2000, will become an “integral part” of the new treaty, but it has still not been decided how: whether there will merely be a reference to it, whether it will be contained in toto in the new constitution, or whether it will be relegated to a protocol annexed. Some innovations. Article 5 of the draft treaty introduces the concept of “dual citizenship”: “Anyone who is a citizen of a member state – says the draft treaty – is a citizen of the Union. He/she has dual citizenship, both national and European, and may freely avail him/herself of the one or the other, depending on choice, with the rights and duties inherent in each of them”. Also new is the proposal, provided by art. 46, of “establishing a procedure for voluntary withdrawal from the Union by decision of a member state”. The Convention on the future of Europe has been at work since 28 February on preparing the text of a future European constitutional treaty, which would replace the treaties currently in force. The work of the Convention should be completed by mid-2003. The text prepared by the Convention will then be submitted to the intergovernmental Conference, composed of the governments of the member states, which might be held in Italy and will have the task of signing the new treaty and transmitting it to the member states for ratification.