Background
Reform Treaty: European Parliament and Intergovernmental Conference
Intergovernmental Conference - 04-09-2007 - 18:53
On 23 June, EU heads of state and government agreed to convene an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on institutional reforms, after the European Parliament gives its opinion. The IGC should start work by the end of July, as soon as the legal requirements are met. The European Council also agreed on a strict schedule: the IGC should complete its tasks before the end of 2007. This would give Member States time to ratify the resulting treaty before the European Parliament elections in June 2009.
The Reform Treaty will contain two substantive clauses, respectively amending the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). The TEU will keep its present name and the TEC will be called Treaty on the Functioning of the Union.
Parliament's assessment is needed for the IGC to start
EU Treaty Article 48 stipulates that Parliament must consulted before an IGC is convened.
The Constitutional Affairs Committee, which will prepare Parliament's opinion on the IGC, appointed its chairman Jo Leinen (PES, DE), as rapporteur. To allow the IGC to start as planned, the committee will approve the text on 9 July, at an extraordinary meeting in Strasbourg, thus enabling the plenary to debate it on 11 July and put it to a plenary vote on 12 July.
During the committee's first (25 June) debate on the outcome of the European Council, the views were generally positive, although MEPs also highlighted the weaknesses of the agreement.
"The balance is generally positive, yet it was a partial failure", said Elmar Brok (EPP-ED, DE). Although the original intention was to address people's concerns, the result is "a text which is more complex than the constitution," he noted.
"It is important that we believe that the reform process is on-going", said Enrique Baron Crespo (PES, ES), adding that "details are important" and Parliament therefore needs "to be careful: just changing a single word can be crucial".
Yet, "despite complications, the outcome at the end of the IGC will be a stronger Union, with greater capacity to act", said Andrew Duff (ALDE, UK).
REF.: 20070705BKG08846
EP opinion on the IGC mandate
In the draft opinion, as put forward by Mr Leinen - but not yet endorsed by the Constitutional Affairs Committee -Parliament gives a green light to the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference. Yet, it also expresses some reservations on the mandate shaping the reforms.
The draft text welcomes the fact that the substance of the constitutional treaty has been salvaged. Specifically, the EU's legal personality, the increased use of qualified majority voting (which would become the rule for all EU policies but defence, social security and fiscal policy), the inclusion in the treaty of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the explicit reference to an EU common approach on energy and climate change, are among the reforms deemed necessary to guarantee a more efficient and democratic Union.
In the same text, Jo Leinen deplores the loss of important elements of the draft constitution, such as the loss of symbols (flag and anthem), of a clear statement of the primacy of EU law, and of clearly comprehensible naming of legislative acts. He also regrets the increased number of exemptions granted to Member States.
How Parliament will participate in the IGC
According to the June European Council conclusions, the European Parliament will be closely involved in the work of the IGC. Three MEPs will join the conference to ensure that Parliament's voice is heard. Parliament is to choose its three IGC representatives on 12 July.
During the previous IGC, in 2003-4, only two MEPs joined the meetings. The decision to increase the EP representation is a response to EP President Hans-Gert Pöttering's observation at the opening of the June summit that "The European Parliament is the directly elected representative of the European Union's citizens and, as such, insists on being appropriately involved in and represented at all levels of negotiations at the prospective intergovernmental conference".
The Parliament aims at ensuring full transparency of the IGC work and, according to the draft Opinion, it will publish all the working documents submitted to the Conference. Moreover, the text states the intention to maintain an open dialogue with national parliaments and the civil society all throughout the IGC and during the following ratification procedure.
New distribution of EP seats
The European Council mandate for the IGC also addresses the issue of a new distribution of seats within the European Parliament. Parliament is invited to present a proposal by October 2007, on the basis of what was agreed in the 2004 IGC.
The Treaty of Nice, as amended by the Accession Treaties for Romania and Bulgaria, set the post-2009 size of Parliament at 736 members. The 2004 IGC then agreed to increase the maximum number to 750 and to set the minimum number of members for each Member State at six and the maximum at 96. Finally, it established that the final number of Members allocated to each Member State would have been decided by the European Council, on the basis of the degressive proportionality principle, which allows the ratio of a Member State's population to the number of its EP seats to be adjusted to improve the representation of the least-populated States.
The Constitutional Affairs Committee will also be in charge of this report, scheduled to be approved by October this year. It has been decided that there will be two co-rapporteurs, one from the EPP-ED group and the other from the PES group.
The ratification procedure
In a resolution on a roadmap for the Union's constitutional process, approved on 7 June 2007, MEPs propose that Member States should co-ordinate their ratification procedures, in order to approve the new text simultaneously by the end of 2008.
Finally, in its draft opinion on the IGC, the Parliament reserves the right to put forward, after the 2009 elections, new proposals for further institutional settlements.