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