EUROPEAN DIARY: It was always going to be difficult to find consensus among the 105 members of the Convention on the Future of Europe but Valéry Giscard d'Estaing succeeded last week in creating an unprecedented sense of unity, writes Denis Staunton.
Unfortunately for Mr Giscard, the convention members were united in outrage against him, on account of his decision to leak to the press his own proposals for reforming EU institutions. A 15-hour meeting of the convention's Praesidium succeeded in modifying the proposals substantially, with John Bruton expressing the most robust objections to Mr Giscard's ideas. But even the revised proposals found little support at the convention, where many members complained that Mr Giscard had effectively hijacked their work to impose his own vision of an EU dominated by its biggest member-states.
At a meeting of national government representatives on Thursday, only the French representative spoke in favour of the proposals, which he described as being close to the Franco-German blueprint for change published in January. Smaller member-states complained that the proposals ignored the principles outlined by 19 countries earlier this month.
Dick Roche, the Irish Government's representative, warned that Mr Giscard could become the author of the convention's failure and predicted that the institutional issues may have to be decided by EU governments in the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) that will follow the convention.
The Dublin MEP, Proinsias De Rossa, suspects there is an element of wishful thinking in Mr Roche's predictions of doom for the convention. "The Irish government system much prefers dealing in the corridors of power to this open process. They feel more comfortable in those circumstances," he said.
Mr Roche insists he wants the convention to succeed and he certainly cannot be faulted for his own efforts to co-ordinate the positions of small states. But if some in the Government would prefer to see the big issues negotiated between governments at the IGC, they would not be alone in Europe.
Countries such as Britain, which did not want to have a convention in the first place, might be quietly relieved if the convention fails to reach consensus on institutional reform. But many more governments are eager for this experiment in open decision-making to succeed and they will work hard to find compromises at the convention.
Mr Roche said last week that, although the Government does not see the merit in appointing an EU president, he could foresee circumstances in which Ireland would agree to such a step. "If it is defined in a way that does not damage the Commission, maybe. In a fairly dramatically modified form, there could be a solution here," he said.
Other small countries may be prepared to compromise on the EU president but they will demand in return major concessions on the reform of the Commission.
The Praesidium's proposals envisage a Commission of 15, including the president and an EU foreign minister, supported by a number of assistant commissioners who would have no voting rights.
The Commission president would choose a team from names suggested by the member-states but no country would have an automatic right to be represented in the Commission.
A number of EU member-states, including Austria and Finland, and most of the new member-states, are already unhappy with the Nice Treaty's provisions to limit the size of the commission once the EU has 27 members. They will press for a return to the position before Nice, when every member-state has the right to appoint a commissioner.
Many are also unhappy with the Praesidium's proposals for electing the Commission president - a single name presented by EU leaders to the European Parliament for approval. This formula - dubbed the "Baghdad model" by some EU officials - is unlikely to give future Commission presidents more political legitimacy than their forerunners. The convention has only seven weeks to finalise Europe's new constitution before its draft is presented to EU leaders in June. If it fails, much of the blame will fall on Mr Giscard.