Date: 5 July 2004

Speakers:
Ben Crum, Associate Professor, Free University of Amsterdam and Associate Fellow, CEPS
Giovanni Grevi, Associate Director of Studies, the European Policy Centre

 
Ben Crum, Associate Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam and Associate Fellow at CEPS started the meeting by welcoming the adoption of the EU Constitution. He stressed that the success of overcoming this big hurdle deserves to be celebrated, even if the shadow of the ratification process is already looming. The main achievements for Crum lie in the simplification and clarification of the EU’s legal framework. In this context he mentioned the integration of all the EU treaties into one framework, the abolition of the pillar structure, the simplification and reduction of legal instruments, the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’ as the standard procedure that will give the European Parliament an equal standing with the Council in the legislative process, and the clarification of legal competences and principles.
 
Concerning institutional questions Mr Crum stressed that only compromises had been possible. The ‘double-hatted’ foreign minister and the European Council president were typical products of these compromises; he also indicated the member states’ reluctance to concentrate EU executive power in the European Commission. Eventually, however, these issues are bound to reappear on the EU agenda. Mr Crum also insisted that the IGC had not only left most of the Convention’s draft Constitutional Treaty intact, but that it had also improved it in some respects. As examples he mentioned the preamble and the mutual defence clause that are clearer now than in the Convention’s draft and the extension of qualified majority voting in several fields. He regretted, however, that the draft had been changed in the sense that strict unanimity on taxes was maintained. In his concluding remarks, Mr Crum stated that because of the major achievements concerning clarification and simplification, even Eurosceptics would have good reasons to prefer the Constitution to the Nice Treaty.
 
Giovanni Grevi, Associate Director of Studies at the European Policy Centre, assessed the Constitution according to the increase of ‘flexibility’ that it would bring to the enlarged Union of 25 member states. He defined ‘flexibility’ in a broad sense as “the ability of the system to adapt to new political challenges”. In this sense, he first looked at the scope for closer cooperation in the Constitution, and stated that Art. I-17 of the Constitution would not imply much change in relation to the ‘old’ Art. 308. Thus it would continue to allow the EU to acquire new competences to attain the objectives set by the Constitution.
 
Mr Grevi then looked at the possibility of future treaty revisions. He welcomed the passarelle clauses concerning several policy areas, because these would allow changes to the Constitution without another ratification process. The simplified revision procedure for Part III of the Constitution, however, is seen by Mr Grevi as a rather meagre result, because it still requires unanimity and ratification if a national parliament insists.
Finally, Mr Grevi assessed the Constitution’s flexibility by way of the instrument of ‘enhanced cooperation’, which he sees as generally strengthened. As examples, he mentioned the upgrading of the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers (ECOFIN), the possibility for enhanced cooperation on criminal and defence matters as well as the possibility of introducing qualified majority voting and co-decision within enforced cooperation. Mr Grevi agreed with the other speaker that the Constitution was the best compromise that could currently be attained, but stressed that it is most likely that it will only last for the next 10 years without major revisions and not for the next 50 years as envisaged by some politicians.
 
When asked where they would see the EU in 10 years, the speakers sketched the following picture:
·          the use of qualified majority voting would have slightly increased by then;
·          the passarelle clause would have been used on matters of criminal cooperation;
·          the developments concerning a common foreign and defence policy might be important, but that would largely depend on the role of the EU’s foreign minister and the member states’ commitment in the area of defence; and
·          new constitutional negotiations would already have started in 2012.