CONSITUTION - TREATY : Pros and cons. - 25.09.2004

 Part 1 of 5 articles on the Constitution and European elections of 2004
      

The Constitution-Treaty (1) adopted by the 25 Heads of the Member States of the European Union (EU) is disappointing by :

· The fact that economic governance remains largely under national authority, including in the euro-zone. If Europe disappoints today, it is first of all by its failure to deliver a better living standard to most of its citizens who have for years undergone restrictive policies needed to clean-up public finances. The euro-zone in particular, should be a showpiece of the well-being created by a more integrated Europe. Instead, growth is weaker than in the rest of the EU and in the other world powers. The unemployment rate is unacceptably high and without a European economic policy, there can be no European social policy.
· Unanimity voting still being retained in key areas. It is surprising that unanimity voting be defended by the British Government since Eurobarometer shows that the British people, with their strong democratic tradition are among the least supportive of unanimity voting in the EU.
· Unanimity being required for the adoption, modification and ratification of the Constitution-Treaty. As demonstrated by Rossi (2) , an EU in which less than 25 members ratify the Constitution-Treaty would be practically unmanageable.
· The length and complexity of the text. The edited text  produced by an international team of  professors arrived too late and in an unreceptive atmosphere (3).  
· The revised voting system in the Council imposed by Heads of State which is unnecessarily complicated and difficult to explain to the average citizen.

A number of participants at the Convention and convinced Europeans have announced that on the basis of these deficiencies that would vote against the ratification of the Constitution-Treaty if their opinion was asked. This is a serious mistake, particularly that several inadequacies of the text were produced by the Convention itself and it is today difficult to see how one would get  a better result under a democratic process.

Furthermore, this Constitution-Treaty brings major improvements. The 10 main ones(4) are  :

1. The symbolic weight of adopting a text very close to a true Constitution that gives the EU its own legal personality under domestic and international law.
2. The replacement of the system of weighted votes in the Council by a system of double majority in which the principle of « one nation, one vote » becomes basic. This opens the way toward a two-chamber system in parallel to the European Parliament where votes are proportionate to the population.
3. The insertion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the body of the Constitution-Treaty, giving it binding legal force.
4. The replacement of the system of rotating Presidencies by the designation of a President at qualified majority voting for a 2 ½ term.
5. The nomination of a Minister of Foreign Affairs who will be Vice-President of the Commission and will preside over the Council of Foreign Affairs (5) . A new European External Action Service will be set up to assist the Foreign Minister.  
6. After 2014, the reduction of the number of Commissioners to less than one per country which in principle  at least should reinforce the collective character of the European executive (6).
7. The replacement of the « pillar-system » by legal instruments and procedures identical for the whole of the institutional framework of the EU. Co-decision between the Council of Ministers And the European Parliament becomes the standard procedure.
8. The application of a new mechanism of « permanent structured cooperation »  in matters of defence. « Enhanced cooperation » will apply to Common Foreign and Security Policy.
9. Qualified majority voting will apply to key domains, such as asylum, immigration and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, although « emergency brakes » are provided to prevent the adoption of a decision by referring the matter to the European Council.
10. The introduction of a passerelle procedure whereby the European Council can decide, unanimously, to introduce qualified majority voting in domains initially reserved to unanimity voting.

Considering these progresses, namely the better allocation of responsibility between the legislative and executive powers ; the preservation of the essential contributions of the Convention ; the fact that the 25 Member States for the first time agreed together on such delicate issues and the opportunity to launch a real debate about European citizenship during the ratification campaign ; it seems to me that the European federalists should forego their political preferences to actively defend this Constitution-Treaty.

I think that it will be easier to implement one day a federal Europe starting from this text than from the past Treaties.

  1. Or constitutional Treaty, but the terms Constitution-Treaty reflect better that it is close to a genuine Constitution and hence carries a stronger symbolic  significance.
  2. What if the Constitutional Treaty is not ratified? Lucia Serena Rossi, European Policy Centre.  
  3. St Antony's College - Oxford University - Making it Our Own: A trans-European proposal on amending the draft Constitutional Treaty for the European Union europa.eu.int/futurum/analyse/contrib/acad/0066_c2_en.pdf
  4. Mostly taken up from a list published by the European Policy Centre. This text should be seen as being for most part in brackets.
  5. This disposition had been proposed by PROMEURO for economic governance in the euro-zone.
6.  Such a system exists already at the European Investment Bank where it has not prevented nominated representatives from giving preferences to national issues.
            Jean-jacques SCHUL