Representative government, together with the rule of law, is a basic political right of citizens in modern democracies. Yet though the EU is responsible for a substantial share of the laws under which they live and spends some at least of the taxes they pay, and the citizens of member states have been designated citizens of the Union, it has not been usual, notably in Britain, to ask how far the Union respects this basic political right. The EC/EU has nevertheless, since its foundation in 1952, moved by steps towards applying it; and perhaps the most important feature of the Convention's Draft Constitution is that it provides for what may be seen as further decisive steps.
Article I-45 affirms that "the working of the Union shall be founded on the principle of representative democracy" and the Draft does indeed go far towards enactment of legislation and control of the executive by the citizens' directly elected representatives. Enactment of legislation, including the expenditure side of the budget, by both the European Parliament and the Council is to be the general rule (save, typically, for certain specific exceptions), thus doing much to complete the legislative role of the citizens' representatives, alongside that of the representatives of the states, as is normal in a federal political system.
The Council's legislative role is to be separated from that regarding foreign policy, with the Foreign Affairs Council chaired by the Union's Foreign Minister. Qualified majority voting on legislation in the General Affairs and Legislative Council is to be the general rule, though again with certain exceptions; and the Byzantine process of weighting the states' votes, so hard for citizens to understand and so ill-suited to respond to the challenges of enlargement, is replaced by a majority of at least half the member states representing at least three fifths of the Union's population. Thus the Council, in this legislative function, becomes more like a House of the States, acting in ways that citizens can understand – though it seems uncertain whether it will be as open as a democratic legislative chamber should be.
The peculiar arrangement whereby there is to be a Commissioner from each state but only fifteen of them having the right to vote, with the others taking their turn by a system of rotation, has attracted much attention. But the method of appointment of the President and of the other Commissioners is a great deal more relevant to the principle of responsibility of the executive to the citizens' representatives. The Draft states both that "the Commission shall be responsible to the European Parliament" and that the Parliament "shall elect the President of the Commission". The role of the President in the formation of the Commission has also been enhanced, with the right to select the voting Commissioners without any formal constraint, thus becoming more like that of a Prime Minister forming a cabinet; and the role of the Parliament is correspondingly enhanced through its right to approve (or not) the Commission as a whole.
The significance of the Parliament's election of the Commission's President is not crystal clear, for it has to vote for or against a single candidate proposed by the European Council. But the European Council is required to take into account the results of the European elections and to decide on this candidate "after appropriate consultations"; and if the candidate is not approved by a majority of the Parliament's members, the European Council must follow the same procedures before proposing a new candidate. Thus the Parliament should be able to convert the procedure into one of virtual co-decision with the European Council, which should be optimal, given the need for a Commission that is acceptable to the states as well as to the citizens' representatives; and the citizens will be able to see that their votes in the European elections help to determine the character of the executive as well as of the legislature.
In sum, apart from the sphere of foreign policy and defence, the Draft goes far to apply the principles of representative government; and with the same exceptions, the rule of law, already strong in the fields of Community competence, is in some ways further strengthened. But despite the continued growth of the Union's responsibilities in the CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy), and although the Draft gives the European Council the power to decide to move to "a common defence", the system remains in this area predominantly intergovernmental, with unanimity the general rule and a minimal role for the Parliament. The dissension over the Iraq war has prompted the question whether, without a continued process of institutional reform in that sphere too, such intense divergence among the states could inflict irremediable damage on the Union as a whole. My expectation is, however, that the improvements to the Community system that the Draft has proposed will, if adopted by the states, be so clearly more effective and democratic that it will come to prevail in the Union's foreign policy as well; and the people of the Union will become citizens in the full political sense of the word.

First of all let me express my warm thanks to all members of the Convention, and to you, Mr Giscard d’Estaing, for the dedication and intelligence you have shown in those long months of hard work that went into this phase of the constitution-building process. The Convention’s success has brought a lasting change in democratic life in the European Union. A great job well done and an unhoped-for result. The draft prepared by the Convention thus provides the basis – an excellent basis – for drawing up the final version of the Constitution. This is a good thing because above all the text has great symbolic value: this is the first time the Union’s foundations have been debated in an open, democratic forum representing the peoples and States of Europe.
Second, the draft Constitution resolutely tackles the issues of institutional balance and the complex nature of the Union. The debate has been intense and thorough, and it has allowed all the fundamental issues put forward to be dealt with coherently, namely:
finding a new and more effective way of reconciling the two tracks of European integration – the Community and the intergovernmental;
striking a balance between the States’ political representation and that of the people, and the resulting roles of Parliament and the Council;
devising a way to organise the representation of the Union’s general interest and the legitimate interests of the individual Member States.
Third and lastly, the Convention has laid the basis for the essential job of bringing the Union’s policies up to date.
The Intergovernmental Conference that is to finalise and formalise the work of the Convention is now commencing. I see two extreme standpoints emerging and I believe we need to discuss this frankly:
First there are those who believe the Convention’s draft should be left unaltered because it represents the only compromise that could be reached and the one with the greatest legitimacy.
Then there are those who would like to throw everything up for discussion because sovereignty is ultimately vested in the States and the last word should be theirs.
However understandable those standpoints might be, I believe both are open to criticism. From the start, ever since we advocated the Convention approach at Nice, we in the Commission have always said that the Intergovernmental Conference should be a short, focused, conclusive phase. But this does not mean it should just be a rubber stamp, because that would deprive the Intergovernmental Conference of its political responsibility. Clearly this Intergovernmental Conference cannot be compared with any other that has gone before, since it will be working on the basis of the excellent work of the Convention. But it still has its primary function, which is to allow the heads of State and government to exercise their political responsibility and present the definitive text for approval to the institutions and the people in their Member States. So it involves a new phase of political ownership. And that does not, of course, demand a lengthy Intergovernmental Conference, but it does call for a proper period of reflection.
There are aspects of the draft Constitution that bear clear witness to the fact that the compromise reached is incomplete or does not go far enough and that the result achieved to date is not the end of the line, as we had originally hoped. So the Member States, in whom sovereignty is ultimately vested, should be able to discuss it once more and see whether there are areas where it can be improved.
It is the Commission’s duty to point out such areas. As it stands, the draft Constitution still calls for unanimous decision-making in over 50 sectors, including some key areas of life in the Union. In such sectors we risk trusting our future to an unconstructive approach involving doing nothing and putting the brakes on, rather than to a positive approach entailing making proposals and building alliances with a view to shared goals.
Everyone agrees, moreover, that one of the shortcomings in the current situation is the lack of a proper instrument for coordination of Member States’ budget policies. But I wonder how people think such coordination can be achieved if the 25 future member countries can continue to exercise a power of veto freely in the area of indirect and company taxation.
Then there is the central problem of the future balance of powers between the Commission, the Council and Parliament. The draft Constitution proposes a Commission made up in a way that will – in my opinion and that of the whole College – make the institution representing the Union’s general interest less able to do its work effectively and credibly. The solution put forward creates a distinction between Commissioners by creating, unnecessarily lesser category. No people of the Union deserves to be represented by a second-class Commissioner. The consequence would be to split the College, where the link with the Member
States has been the Commission’s driving force for the last 50 years. More progress is needed to make sure every member country has a full Commissioner.
At the same time, the present draft Constitution leaves choices open on crucial points, such as the way the Councils are to work and responsibilities in the field of external relations. But the task of the Intergovernmental Conference is to make the work of the institutions more transparent and more effective and to prevent duplication and halfway solutions that may breed future conflicts.
Lastly, the Convention did not have time to update the current wording on the Community policies. In some cases this dates back to the 1950s and has been partly superseded.
It will obviously be difficult to settle all the issues still outstanding. But it is our duty to take a step back from the current political circumstances and give careful thought to those points where changes are necessary and can still be made now, so the constitutional structure is even more capable of meeting the challenges ahead. We need to see whether the political will exists. Is there no such will or is it a sense of realism that is inducing us to refrain from tackling these issues and to leave the text to stand?
If this is the case, the Commission is willing to take note of this calmly and realistically, mindful of the fact that significant progress has in any case been made. Essentially this has been the case every time the treaties were amended. It was true for the Single European Act and for the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. It will be true here too. But we must realise we will need to be ready to cope with further crises and agree further changes and adaptations. This is what European integration has always entailed – a mixture of vision and reaction to unfolding crises. It is the history we have lived through and we know it well, even if there are times when we need to move forward more quickly. And this is definitely one of those times. At all events, if we want to capitalise on our experience and really draft a Constitution to last, we must provide for mechanisms that allow decisions to be taken tomorrow where they cannot be taken today.
We must look at more realistic procedures for amending the Constitution to allow us to act quickly and effectively – under pressure of crises – where the arrangements we are setting out today turn out to be insufficient. The worst-case scenario would be to find ourselves with ill-adapted constitutional provisions that simply cannot be amended because this would call for unanimity among at least 25 Member States. This is true as regards decisions calling for unanimity, which applies even today in so many sectors, and it is also true as regards bringing policies up to date, which even now we are unable to tackle. A Constitution set in stone for all time, incapable of providing the solution to future crises, would be not only a Constitution with something lacking, it would be the negation of the whole history of European integration. And that we must avoid at all costs if we want to perform our historic task responsibly.
In our work we need to keep a clear vision of the direction the Union should continue to follow. Peace, freedom and solidarity must continue to be our goals in the day-to-day work of the institutions. To do this, we must give the Union the practical tools to attain and hold to those goals. The Union must speak with a single voice in the world – a strong, authoritative, peaceable voice. Internally and externally it must be able to uphold the force of law which imposes duties but also protects the individuals, safeguarding their freedom to act in an ordered, creative society. Lastly, the Union must have the means to show solidarity. This takes the form of support for the poorest, in an inclusive society. It is expressed through joint action to provide assistance in the event of natural disasters. Lastly, it is based on the duty of mutual defence, in the conviction that the defence of each and every Member State is the best way to show we belong to a single family.
A new phase has now started: we must finish the good work done by the Convention – wisely, resolutely and with courage. Of course it needs to be finished quickly. But above all it needs to be finished properly. The Commission will continue to do its part to help achieve that aim.

Speech made at the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 3 September 2003

The European Convention closed its doors on 10 July, and its president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, delivered the final draft treaty establishing the Constitution for Europe to the chairman of the European Council, Silvio Berlusconi. There then followed, during the summer, a ‘cooling off’ period of sober reflection on the outcome of the Convention before the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) opened on 4 October.
The Italian presidency declared itself in favour of a short, sharp and definitive IGC that would accept the work of the Convention as a package deal. Certain other governments, however, did not take long to strike their own alternative postures. An early trawl around national capitals by Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini suggested that the original six member states of the European Community will be able to stick fairly comfortably with the Convention’s draft. The Spanish will grumble about the loss of the advantage they gained in the Treaty of Nice with respect to voting weight in the Council, but they are not expected to block agreement on the constitution if they continue to be well placed to push up the size of the EU budget when it is next renegotiated both in 2006 and 2012.
Some smaller member states – Austria, Finland, Portugal and Sweden – feel themselves to have been rather overwhelmed by the dynamics of the Convention and can be expected to try to assert themselves at the IGC, especially in continued opposition to the proposal for a full-time president of the European Council. But their misgivings are more about esteem than substance, and they would do themselves a great disservice in the longer run if they were to block the constitutional package deal prepared by the Convention.
The ten acceding states, mostly small, find themselves in a similar position. For them, the Convention was a rude awakening to the facts of life of EU politics. It was natural that they should resent the way that the stable and prosperous Union they thought they were joining turned out to be in the middle of a constitutional foment, an economic depression and a savage dispute about transatlantic relations. They discovered in the Convention dimensions to EU membership that had been partially hidden from them in the accession negotiations, notably in the field of security and defence. If they had been in any doubt about the importance of the supranational institutions in the scheme of things European, their time in the Convention dispelled it. Poland will support Spain in the pitch for more EU money and for a return to their over-privileged voting weight of Nice. And the Baltics will support Britain in clinging to the national veto on tax matters. Overall, however, the new member states will welcome the period of stabilisation that the new constitution offers.
The British difficulty
The only real obstacle to the constitutional settlement that Europe needs is the United Kingdom government, whose White Paper on the Convention and the IGC was published in early September. The document suffers from being partial, narrow and complacent. It rejects the constitutional character of the draft treaty. It still finds it difficult to accept that the Charter of Fundamental Rights is to become binding. It insists that the Constitution does not involve any 'fundamental change' despite the many innovations, some of them very radical, agreed by the Convention.
Confusingly, the British government claims that the pooling of sovereignty strengthens the independence of the 'nation State'. It ignores the crucial role of the European Commission in identifying the common European interest. It is silent on the strengthening of the powers of the Commission, for example, with respect to the multi-annual programming of the Union's work, and says nothing about the election of the Commission President by the European Parliament. The UK appears not to know that the new Foreign Minister will be a Vice-President of the Commission, in charge of a joint administration using EU as well as national resources. Indeed, the wide extension of the legislative and budgetary powers of the European Parliament hardly gets a mention. Nor does the enhanced constitutional role for the European Court of Justice.
While the importance of more qualified majority voting in the Council is upheld as good for the UK - 'we are rarely outvoted' - the government wishes to stick to unanimity for some poorly defined 'vital national interests'. It is not explained how common foreign, security and defence policy can be developed unanimously, or how fiscal policy obstacles to the smooth operation of the single market can be lessened without QMV. Despite the pretence of supporting the emerging defence dimension of the Union, it was clear from the White Paper that the British were happy to stick with NATO.
The UK government brings its own unique interpretation of the job of the full-time President of the European Council. In direct contradiction to what the Convention agreed, the UK now claims that the new President will coordinate the work of the Council of Ministers and 'deliver' the agenda of member states. Widespread fears about a possible clash with the functions of Commission President and EU Foreign Minister were, in the White Paper, passed over.
Fortunately, Tony Blair now appears to have taken a direct grip on the IGC portfolio himself. Let us hope he decides to grasp the opportunity provided by the Constitution to find his way back into Europe and away from the marginalised position in which he was left in the aftermath of the Iraq crisis. Signals emerging from his tripartite meeting with Chirac and Schroeder in Berlin, on 20 September, were rather encouraging. Mr Blair appears to have dropped British opposition to the idea of structured cooperation in defence (Article I-40.6). He now seems willing to join with a core group of capable and willing member states to push forward with military integration within the EU context whether or not NATO chooses to be involved operationally. This is good news for Britain in Europe - and also the essential first step towards developing a truly common European foreign, security and defence policy.
Institutions at odds
Before the IGC commenced, there were the official opinions delivered by the European Parliament and the European Commission. These were notable for their variance with each other.
MEPs have given the Constitution a warm response. Confident that the European Parliament is the clear victor in the inter-institutional struggle for power, it would indeed have been churlish for them to do otherwise. The Parliament gains over thirty new areas of legislative codecision with the Council. Its purview is extended over the whole EU budget, including the common agricultural policy. It will elect the President of the Commission, as well as have the right to block international trade agreements. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has become for many MEPs an article of faith, is installed in the Constitution with binding effect.
Those members of the Convention drawn from the European Parliament were more persuasive with their fellow MEPs than MM. Barnier and Vitorino seem to have been with their colleagues in the Commission. President Prodi himself has taken a contrary, even tetchy, position on the draft Constitution. His big criticism of the draft Constitution concerns the future size and shape of the Commission itself. Prodi does not believe that the concept of junior Commissioners, without a vote in the college, is feasible. He cannot imagine a Commission without a senior Commissioner from the large member states. His answer, adopted as the formal position of the college, is to propose an internal reorganisation designed to cater for the exigencies of a large Commission with one representative of each nationality.
The Commission's attempt to open up this question will receive support at the IGC from several, mostly smaller member states, whose own representatives in the Convention were previously complicit in the settlement proposed by the Convention. The Italian presidency, therefore, is faced with something of a dilemma. They had hoped that the government leaders of the European Union would feel obliged to respect the work of the Convention they had themselves set up. One understands the frustration of France and Germany who, with the Italians, are seeking to defend the legacy of the Convention. After all, what is far more important than the size and shape of the Commission is its relative institutional strength. The smaller countries would do well to ask themselves whether a larger college will not be a weaker one.
Nor is it good enough for the Commission or for individual member states to come up with their own perfect solutions to Europe's governance questions. For any new proposal to prevail over those of the Convention, it will need to be able to attract more support and to forge a stronger consensus than that achieved by the Convention. That will be difficult, if not impossible. The Convention considered all the options, and the package deal done in the Convention is almost certainly the best compromise going.
In particular, Spain and Poland should drop their attempt to get back to the Treaty of Nice. Their tactics are dangerous and their arithmetic wrong. Unpick the deal on the QMV threshold and the widening scope of QMV as well as the powers of the Commission and Parliament will be jeopardised. The three big states of France, Germany and the UK (combined population 200 million) can already form by themselves a blocking minority in the Council. Under the Treaty of Nice this is 38 per cent of the population of the Union (172 million). In the draft Constitution the blocking minority is 40 per cent (181 million). Even with their current privileged voting weights, Poland and Spain (78 million) need several other partners if they are to stop a piece of legislation they don't like. The Polish and Spanish governments should recognise the predicament of the largest member states which is that a simple majority in the Council or the Commission can be formed by the thirteen small states representing only 11 per cent of the population of the Union. That is precisely why majorities in the Council have to be qualified and votes weighed in proportion to population.
Unpick one element of the draft Constitution and the whole scheme could fall apart. The verdict of public opinion on a failure by Europe's collective leadership to grasp such a historic opportunity to re-found the Union on a more democratic and legitimate basis would be, quite rightly, harsh. Europe awaits its Constitution and the leaders must deliver it.

After a year and a half of intensive discussion with phases of controversy and standstill, the Convention in the end achieved an impressive consensus. No-one would have predicted with certainty in February 2002 that in the end a draft for a constitution would be completed so quickly. Particularly in the final phase of debate many members of the Convention criticised the Praesidium's mode of operation as opaque and biased in favour of the large Member States. The differences between large and small Member States might have been defused, if not resolved, by an earlier discussion of the institutional questions.
In the final phase, however – with the danger of possible failure vividly clear – the appreciation of the importance of the inclusion of the delegations and political groupings grew, strengthened by common positions of the members of the European Parliament and the national parliaments. The chairpersons of the political families of the PPE, Socialists and Liberals in the Convention contributed to the formulation of compromises in common position papers, particularly on the extension of the decisions to be taken with a qualified majority and on the balance of the institutions, as well as the limiting of the function of the new full-time president of the European Council and the decision on the setting-up of a diplomatic service of the Union within the framework of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
The result produced by the 105 Convention members from the European Parliament, the national governments and parliaments and the Commission is a considerable improvement over the current complex collection of treaties. An integrated draft constitution without alternatives was presented in consensus which strengthens the symbolic character of the European Union as a union of citizens and states. It is above all remarkable that representatives from 28 states were able to come to an agreement on common values for the Union.
Questions which had to be left unanswered in Amsterdam and particularly in Nice could, at least with effect up to 2009, be addressed and resolved. This was primarily true for the rules on majority decisions in the Council and the size of the Commission, and the distribution of seats in the European Parliament. The largest accession round since the existence of the Union had produced the necessary pressure to act. The threat of a non-functioning Union with 25 or more Member States produced the required flexibility.
The result also showed the advantages of the Convention method over the usual, unanimity-based conferences of civil servants at the government level. The Convention, the majority of whose members were MEPs, achieved politically far-reaching compromises through public discussion compelling the exchange of arguments instead of premature national "nos". It is therefore to be welcomed that it was possible at the last minute to firmly embody the Convention method as the rule for dealing with proposed amendments to the Constitution. The European Council can only dispense with convening a Convention before the Intergovernmental Conference with the consent of the European Parliament. It would make sense in future to strengthen the independent role of the Convention by electing the president and the two vice-presidents from among the Convention members.
The criteria for judging the results of the Convention are embodied in the assignment by the Laeken summit to make the extended Union more efficient, more transparent and more democratic. The integration of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in a prominent position in the Constitution, the clear division into exclusive, shared and supplementary competencies and the reduction of a multitude of legal instruments are qualitative improvements in this direction. For the European Parliament the general introduction of co-decision as the rule for the process of legislation is to be particularly welcomed, as is the consolidation of its negotiating position in the now obligatory multi-annual financial planning. The European Parliament is further strengthened by the newly introduced consultation by the European Council in the choice of candidate for Commission President, taking into account the result of the European elections, and by his subsequent election.
It would be false not to mention that some things which were desirable and necessary were not achieved. However, it is the nature of a compromise that in order to achieve a satisfactory solution for all, everybody will have to concede ground on some points. For instance, for the majority of the Convention members the upgrading of the European Council to an institution and the establishment of the function of a full-time President of the European Council was unnecessary. This could lead to paralysing competition with the Commission President and the new Minister for Foreign Affairs. This solution was arrived at due to pressure by several large Member States. Nevertheless, close co-operation on the part of the European Parliament and the national parliaments in the final phase led to a limitation of the functions, more specifically, that the European Council may not exert legislative competence. The competencies of the president are essentially limited to the co-ordination in the European Council and the external representation of the Union in the CFSP at the level of the heads of state and government, which means at summit meetings with third countries and in the framework of the G8, provided this does not restrict the rights of the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The position of the Commission President will receive greater democratic legitimacy and be strengthened within the Commission. Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after appropriate consultations, the European Council, deciding by qualified majority, will put to the European Parliament its proposed candidate for the Presidency of the Commission. This candidate will subsequently be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its members. The Commission President can designate areas of responsibility to the European Commission and Commissioners, and also demand the resignation of individual Commissioners. It would also have been desirable to give the President the option of rejecting candidates proposed by Member States.
In the Council, decision-making with a qualified majority on the basis of a double majority of states and of 3/5 of the population, and the possibility of reducing the number of MEPs, will lead to more efficiency. The fact that the innovations in the setting-up of the Commission, majority decision-making and the set-up of the European Parliament will not take effect until 2009 is, regrettably, part of the compromise with which, above all, the consent of several hesitant national governments was wrung. From the perspective of integration policy it would of course have been preferable for these essential regulations to be in place when the constitution enters into force.
A central argument for the setting-up of the convention was to improve the functioning of an enlarged Union. This in turn requires room for a dynamic development of the Constitution itself. It would be unrealistic, and also undesirable, for the Constitution to be unalterable. Yet, the current rule of the alteration of the Constitution requiring unanimity and ratification by all Member States could lead to the prevention of necessary improvements. A solution is necessary which on the one hand makes essential changes dependent on the agreement of all 25 or more Members, but on the other hand prevents the permanent blockade of necessary developments by one Member State. In the Convention it was therefore suggested by all political parties that changes to the constitution, with the exception of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the transfer of competencies, should be allowed to enter into force with a 5/6 majority of states and a 2/3 majority in the European Parliament.
The Convention has finished its work. The European Parliament will, as usual, critically accompany and influence the Intergovernmental Conference in Rome with two representatives. The PPE Convention group, as the largest political grouping, will continue to meet during the Italian Presidency in order to be able to effectively influence the negotiations within the framework of the political family.
In order to be successful, the compromise package of the Convention must remain untouched. If one stone is removed from the pyramid, it will collapse in its entirety. After all, a large number of governments, through the participation of their foreign ministers or members of government in the Convention, already have a share in the consensus which has been reached. The Intergovernmental Conference should be completed by December 2003 and the Constitutional Treaty signed after the accession of the new Member States on 1 May 2004. The proposal by President Giscard d'Estaing that the Constitutional Treaty should be signed on Europe Day, 9 May 2004, by the then 25 Member States in Rome, deserves full support.
The European election in June 2004 could be seen as a Europe-wide "referendum" with a consultative character. The actual process of ratification should, however, be conducted in each country according to its own political traditions and constitutional rules.

Politics is always the art of the possible; but it is good politics only if, amidst the many, it pursues the best “possible”; when it achieves it, it is great politics. I do not consider good politics the work of the European Convention, handed out some days ago to the Italian government. Indeed, I am convinced that the decisive step towards a real European Union was possible and the Convention missed it just when Europe and the world have an almost desperate need of union and strength.
Union, it must be repeated, means ability to decide and act for the common good. And as Europe’s common good – internal and external peace in the first place – has been laid down for some time, the two objectives were, and are, to extend the majority decision-taking and to provide the resources and the means; all the rest is fringe. The Convention missed both of them. It did some important things, but on the fringe; the decisive step towards the real union, there is no point in disguising it, was missed.
The step was possible. For the first time they set about to write a Constitution, the founding act of a political Union, given that in the contemporary world the States are not born out of marriage or conquest. For the first time, the task was entrusted not to government officials, but to a representative assembly, and in it a clear majority was in favor of the union. Certainly, the Convention was bound to split, and also the governments of the present Union would split. But when did they not split in the past, at each one of the steps that were accomplished?
Hence, it was not good politics, and who knows if another occasion will ever occur again. Sometimes I fear that a future historian will remember the year 2003 as that in which Europe – like Italy in the XV century or ancient Greece – lost its last chance to remain an active player in world history.
This, anyway, is the past. Today, the best of the possibles is no longer the same of one year ago, nor maybe of three months ago. And for Europe, for Italy which is presiding over it, good politics is to assess the best of what is possible today, and pursue it with determination. I believe that such “best” is, in spite of what I said above, to approve the Convention’s project and make it stronger – maybe – in one point. The point is the possibility to proceed, under the new treaty, beyond the result achieved so far (the so-called evolutionary clauses).
Certainly it will not be the big step. However, it will not be an easy step either, because today the risk of making the result worse is bigger than the possibility of making it better. It will be necessary to thwart the attempts, already announced, to strip the project of its present attributes; and it will be necessary to explore any possibility of making it stronger.
The European presidency is a potentially powerful tool. However, we have seen in the past feeble presidencies, paralyzed by disorganization and by the reproachable desire of pleasing everybody. In the past, Italy was able to use the presidency with a very great skill, determination, smartness, a precise strategic sense, because it had objectives clear in their substance, not the desire of pleasing everybody. More than once Italy, that of the wrongly-despised First Republic, played great politics in Europe.
Are four months enough time for achieving the best of what is possible today, and getting the satisfaction of a solemn signing ceremony in Rome? I believe yes. Normally, the length of time does not help the outcome of difficult negotiations. The Bretton Woods conference, which in 1944 laid the bases of a new international monetary system, lasted less than twenty days; the Philadelphia Convention, which in 1787 wrote the American Constitution, six weeks. Four months are enough if the objective is not the signing in Rome, but the quality of the achievement.