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The chapter concerning Institutions is one of the subjects that arouses most interest in the internal and external debate concerning the work of the Convention for the future of Europe. “It was, perhaps, a mistake to present the articles on the President of the Council of Europe and on the restricted Commission so early”, affirmed the vice president of the Convention, the Belgian Jean-Luc Dehaene. “Nonetheless, the Praesidium intends to prepare an amended draft that will constitute a new basis for discussion”. The new articles, presented to the press on Monday 26 May, are also based on the compromise work of the six founder States (Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France, Germany and Italy): yes to a full-time President of the EU Council, but with limited co-ordinating powers which safeguard the prerogatives of the President of the Executive and of the EU Foreign Minister, and with the obligation to refer the outcome of all meetings to the EP; strengthening the role of the EP through the extension of shared decision-making; restricted composition of the Commission, but only beginning in 2009 and thus maintaining for the next five years the principle of ‘one State, one Commissioner’ as defined in the Treaty of Nice. “The guarantee for small States lies precisely in the strengthening of the two institutions that defend general European interests, i.e., Commission and Parliament”, added Dehaene. According to John Bruton, former Irish premier and member of the Praesidium, “people are wrong to think that the Convention is a mere academic exercise while awaiting the inter-governmental conference in which the member States will be able to re-write what we have proposed. We are a wide political grouping which must at all costs identify the best solution to guarantee the institutional equilibrium of an expanded Europe”. In an appeal ‘to the innovators of the European Convention’, the permanent forum of civil society requests that included in the Treaty be the principle of the source of sovereignty as belonging to the people, in addition to the objectives contained in the draft of the Constitution: the rejection of war, sustainable development, the fight against poverty, universal access to services of general interest, the recognition of socially-useful activities, the support of family life and the extension of European citizenship to citizens of third countries legally resident on EU territory.
