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Following heated discussions, damaging leaks and last-minute revisions which risked compromising the very work of the Convention on the future of Europe (cf. SirEurope no. 31/2003), the Presidium of the Convention presented its “Draft articles for Title IV of the first part of the Constitution” to the plenary assembly at the end of April. The text relates to the system and functions of Community Institutions for the enlarged EU. It comprises in all fifteen articles, which will be discussed at the next plenary assembly of the Convention on 15-16 May. The Institutions. To the six currently existing Institutions (European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice, Central Bank and Audit Court) is added the European Council or Summit of the Heads of State and of Government. The formations of the Council of Ministers are simplified: the various thematic Councils are organized in the form of ‘legislative Councils’, and complement the already existing ‘general affairs’, economic and financial affairs’, ‘justice and security’ Councils. In addition, a ‘Council of foreign affairs’ is to be established. It will be chaired by the EU Minister of Foreign Affairs who will be appointed by the Council to head EU foreign and common security policy. The Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee shall maintain their status as ‘advisory organs of the Union’. The Presidium has also proposed to the Convention the establishment of a “Congress of the peoples of Europe’, a third of its delegates composed of representatives of the EP and two thirds of representatives of the national Parliaments; it would act as a “forum for meeting and reflection on European political life”. Functions. As widely requested, the powers of the European Parliament (EP) will be reinforced: the MEPs (in number ‘not higher than 700′ in the enlarged Europe) will have the task of electing the President of the Commission and exercising the legislative function together with the Council. The EP’s powers of political control over the activities of the other Institutions shall also be increased. The European Council shall “give’ to the Union the necessary impulses for its development and define its general political guidelines and priorities”. It shall be chaired by the ‘President of the European Council’, who shall be elected by qualified majority for a period of two and a half years, a term of office renewable no more than once; he shall also have responsibility for the external representation of the Union in matters of foreign policy and common security. The European Commission, executive organ of the Union, shall “exercise functions of coordination, implementation and management, according to the conditions laid down by the Constitution”. It will be composed of a President, a maximum of 14 Members and a similar number of ‘delegate Commissioners’. The Commission is the guarantor of the European Constitution. Its policy guidelines shall be defined by its President, elected by the EP for a five-year term on the basis of lists of three candidates (including at least one woman) proposed by the member Governments. Respect for the Constitution and for the laws of the Union shall be enforced by the Court of Justice and the Tribunal of first Appeal, with its headquarters in Luxembourg. Judges (at least one per member state) and appeal court lawyers are appointed by the national Governments for six years. Like the Court, the Central European Court and the Audit Court shall maintain their own prerogatives: respectively, the definition and implementation of EU monetary policy and the maintenance of the stability of prices, and the examination and control of the accounts of the Institutions of the EU.
