The culture of constitution-making? “Listening” at the Convention on the Future of Europe

Abstract

Established in the wake of the Nice Treaty debacle by the December 2001 European Council Laeken Summit, the Convention on the future of Europe is a radical political experiment. The Convention has been meeting in Brussels under the chairmanship of ex-heads of state Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene since February this year. It combines a novel political formula with an immense open-ended remit. Its 105 members represent the governments and parliaments of the EU15 and of the 13 candidate accession states, and the European Parliament. For the first time national parliaments and the European Parliament are sitting jointly with governments. This is also the first occasion on which the accession states have participated as equals in the EU (technically they are non-voting, but consensus is the aim). The Convention takes its mandate from the Laeken Declaration, which proclaims that “the Union stands at a cross-roads.” The complexity, juxtaposition and inter-relation of the questions which the Declaration raises, and the urgent historic decisions which accompany these – as well as explicit expectations from many quarters – earn the Convention the label ‘constitutional'. Media and academic comment alike favour comparisons with the 1787 Philadelphia constitutional convention – neither a recent nor a local precedent (but one with obvious additional appeal for the Euro-federalist tendency). A more empirical reference is the Convention that drafted the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. For a recent survey of the Convention's progress see The Economist.