The 5th plenary session on the Convention on the future of Europe was held in Brussels on 6 and 7 June. The Presidium formalized the establishment of the first six internal working groups: Economic governance, chaired y the German Klaus Haensch; National Parliaments, Gisela Stuart (UK); Charter of Fundamental rights of the EU, Antonio Vitorino (P); Complementary functions, Henning Christophersen (DK); Juridical personalità, Giuliano Amato (I); Principle of subsidiarity, Inigo Mendez de Vigo (E). The President of the Convention, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, proposed the creation of a further two work groups, devoted respectively to issues of Security and justice and Common Foreign Policy, prior to the next plenary session at the end of the month. The “phase of listening” (i.e. the first of the three phases of the Convention’s work according to the initial intention) is now ending to give way to the second, more properly operative phase thanks to the activities of the work groups. The plenary session was also an occasion to debate the questions linked to justice and internal affairs. With few exceptions, the plenum of the Convention agreed that the role of the EU should be reinforced, that its procedures be simplified to “remedy the great complexity of the system”, that the third pillar (currently managed at the intergovernmental level) be transferred to the Community level and that the control of the frontiers become a common problem of the Union. Two hypotheses that were circulating in the course of the first sessions seem by now to have lapsed: first, the insertion in the new Treaty (on whose nature, constitutional or not, the work group chaired by Giuliano Amato will be called to pronounce) of a “list of functions” that would rigidly identify the responsibilities at the three levels of government, European, national and regional; and second, the creation of new Community institutions (such as a second parliamentary chamber).To the theme of the role of the national parliaments was dedicated the second part of the debate in the plenary session: in a context of general consensus for the reinforcement of the role of the national Parliaments in the European decision-making process, the Commissioner Michel Barnier, member of the Presidium, affirmed that “as guardians of national sovereignty, the national Parliaments must be associated with the exercise of European sovereignty”. The next plenary session of the Convention will take place in Brussels on 24 and 25 June. The Forum of civil society will be held during this session.———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 35 N.ro relativo : 23 Data pubblicazione : 14/06/02
