Giscard to presents draft constitution at summit

From: Marc-Oliver Pahl (info@mopahl.de)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 11:32:11 CEST

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    Giscard to presents draft constitution at summit
    www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=8114

    Chairman of the European Convention Valéry Giscard d’Estaing will be the
    first speaker at tonight's EU autumn summit in Brussels. The EU heads of
    states will hear Mr Giscard's report on the progress of his convention set up
    by the Laeken summit in December last year. It has worked since February
    with the view to reform the EU treaties and possibly writing a European
    Constitution.

    In the meeting tonight in Brussels, Mr Giscard is supposed to present the
    draft architecture for the EU Constitution or a Constitutional Treaty, as it
    might be named. The leading presidium of the Convention will meet tonight
    after Mr Giscard has reported to the heads of EU states to continue their
    work ahead of the next Convention meeting, to start on Monday.

    Mr Giscard presented his first draft on 17 October in a closed Presidium
    meeting in Brussels. The drafts were numbered and collected after the
    meeting which had a heated debate over Mr Giscard’s plans to found a whole
    new EU system supposed to replace all of the current EU treaties.
    Should member states fail to ratify this new
    constitution – by referendum or otherwise –
    then they will simply not be a part of the new system. They will be
    outside of the new Europe.
    This take-it-or-leave-it clause was met with harsh
    criticism from especially the Danish and the Irish
    representatives in the Presidium.

    The European Convention has 105 members elected
    by the governments, national parliaments, the EU Commission
    and the European Parliament. Also the candidate countries
    participate in the Convention, which is supposed to finish
    its work in June 2003 before the summit in Greece.



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