Thinking with a single voice ” “

The 6th plenary session of the Convention for the future of Europe (Brussels, 11 and 12 July) tackled the question of the foreign action of the EU, dedicating the first day to foreign policy in general (foreign policy and joint security, trade, cooperation in development) and the second to defence policy. Justifying the decision to keep the two aspects separate, the president of the Convention Valéry Giscard d’Estaing emphasized that “the Treaties already confer a certain structure on foreign policy and joint security. That structure needs to be developed. Defence, on the other hand, concerns another context and hence one that needs a new approach”. The decisions taken by the Convention include in fact the creation of two separate work groups: “foreign relations of the EU” and “defence policy”, to which two other new work groups can now be added: namely, “crossborder security and justice” and “simplification of the legislative procedure”, which will bring to ten the number of groups currently in operation. More powers to Solana. The debate registered substantial unanimity among the delegates on the need to augment the powers and functions of the Senior Representative of EU foreign policy (a post currently occupied by the General Secretary of the Council, the Spaniard Javier Solana), thus reinforcing the hypothesis supported by many of combining the roles of EU foreign policy supremo and vice-president of the Commission in the future institutional architecture of the Community. This would finally enable Europe to express herself at the international level “with a single voice”. The two work groups on foreign action are now called to formulate specific proposals aimed at laying the constitutional foundations for the foreign policy of security and defence, a particularly difficult task given the need to mediate between the two diametrically opposed positions of those who prefer to maintain a strong government role and those who argue for the adoption of the Community method which would automatically confer more powers on the Commission’s executive. Avoiding conflicts. Giscard intends at all costs to prevent “the Convention and hence Europe being blocked” by the possible frontal collision between the two views. He has therefore affirmed that “a system needs to be found in which the two legitimacies of the Union reciprocally recognize each other and lay the foundations of a common endeavour”. In the course of the press conference at the end of the session, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing gave notice of the intention to present no later than early November 2002 a first rough outline of the constitutional Treaty. He added, however, that this “will still not be a proper draft of such a treaty in a series of articles, but a schematic text that will permit the discussion on the institutions of the Union to be tackled from November on and an ad hoc working group to be established”. “We mustn’t be in a hurry”. Questioned about the real possibility of concluding the Convention by the established deadline with a view to permitting the Council to call the intergovernmental Conference for the reform of the Treaties by 2003, Giscard replied that “the Convention does not intend to sacrifice quality to haste” and that “the one certainty consists in the fact that the conclusions shall be presented to a European Council, perhaps an extraordinary one”. The July session of the Convention for the future of Europe coincided with the conclusion of the “listening phase”. The Convention’s work now enters the “study phase”, in practice already begun following the establishment of the work groups. The next session on the programme (12-13 September) will tackle the theme of legislative simplification, while the plenary session at the beginning of October will have a single point on its agenda: discussion on the ways of controlling subsidiarity.