EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT'S DRAFT
reviewed by Harold S.BIDMEAD
The First and Second Reports of the Parliamentary Committee on Institutional Affairs on the Constitution of the European Union make fascinating reading, not only because the draft constitution is so stimulating, but because of the reasons given for drafting it, e.g.:
First Report: Why a Constitution rather than a treaty?
A treaty is usually an agreement between sovereign states. It binds only them and is applicable only to them. It does not directly bind the citizens nor directly grant them rights or obligations. Where the treaty sets up an organization this is usually able to act only on the basis of the consent of the signatory states.
Ambiguity allows national governments to take the credit for Community activities when they are popular or succesful and to blarne Brussels when they are a failure.
The debate on Maastricht has revealed deep ignorance of the European institutional realities. The complexity of Community machinery, the confusion of powers and responsibilities, the opaqueness of Community legislation, the illegibility of the text of the Treaty itself, none of this has helped to gain popular support. Federalists fear a return to intergovernmental systems and re-nationalization under the pretext of subsidiarity, while nationalists are upset by the threat to their national identity posed by bureaucratic centralism incarnated by the Brussels Commission. Everybody exaggerates the dangers. A constitution, simple and legible, should reassure everybody by creating a stable political and legal framework in which powers, competence and responsibilities were clearly defined.
Second report: Besides repeating the above: The European Parliament must reply to the fears expressed during the debate on Maastricht by formulating an alternative strategy based on clarity, simplicity, legibility and the definition of political and legal principles which everybody can understand and which guarantee fundamental political rights of states and citizens. This should represent Parliament's main contribution to the announced revision of Maastricht. It is no longer possible to ask citizens to approve a legal hotch-potch that is difficult to understand even for the initiated. Maastricht, instead of simplifying, adds to the complexity. It is absolutely necessary to give the Community a reference framework which will make it possible to modify provisions no longer adapted to reality.
New international order: In its own interest, Europe is anxious to contribute. It can do this effectively only by ceasing to be a disparate political coalition of States with different vlews and interests and by transforming itself into a federation of states capable of speakinq with a single voice and acting in unison.
Candidate countries: Negotiators, both from the candidate countries and from the Community, must know exactly what they are committing themselves to. A Constitution would avoid ambiguities and would constitute protection for the Community and candidates. The converse - modifying the Community to adapt it to a larger number of countries - would result in dilution into a new EFTA; each state would no doubt have great liberty of action but collective action would become impossible or as ineffective as the inter-governmental action in Bosnia.
Democracy: All power emanates from the people and their representatives. All who exercise power must be accountable to the people. A treaty signed only by states would not be consonant with these principles. That is why a Constitution is more important, from the point of view of democracy.
It is important to construct a federal type constitution, a system of legal and political guarantees which safeguards the liberties of the individual and the autonomy of the Member States in the spheres of activity that are germane to them.
I endorse these views, but N.B.: a state that promises not to exercise sovereignty in certain spheres, yet retains the power to break its promise at any time, does not surrender sovereignty.
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