EU: Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing is today expected to declare a consensus in favour of his draft EU constitution despite last-minute attempts to revise it by members of the Convention on the Future of Europe.
Mr Giscard and the convention's 12-person praesidium yesterday rejected proposals from national parliamentarians and members of the European Parliament for changes to the draft.
However they accepted a number of drafting changes proposed by national representatives, including one that makes explicit the equal rotation among member-states of the chair of sectoral councils such as meetings of finance and agriculture ministers.
Among the changes called for by the parliamentarians were new rules on qualified majority voting that would abolish national vetoes on any issue if a qualified majority within the European Council agreed.
They also wanted to allow treaty changes, now permissible only with the approval of all member-states, to be brought about by five-sixths of EU countries.
The praesidium accepted one of the parliamentarians' proposals for a "citizens' initiative" that would allow one million citizens spread across "a significant number" of member-states to oblige the commission to initiate EU legislation on an issue.
Mr John Bruton TD, a member of the praesidium, said he believed that the ceiling of 1 million citizens was too low, and the Government's representative at the convention, Mr Dick Roche, described the proposal as poorly thought out.
Mr Roche expressed satisfaction, however, at a number of other changes to the draft constitution, including one which he said would allow Ireland to support the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the text. Another change would ensure that EU institutions would continue to be obliged to reply to correspondence from EU citizens in the Irish language.
Mr Bruton was confident that the convention would end by lunchtime today, and that a consensus would be declared in favour of the draft text.
"I suspect it will be consensus by exhaustion. I think it will be declared. Giscard will say, 'I believe we have a consensus'."
Green TD Mr John Gormley criticised the draft, saying that the arrangements for appointing the Commission were worse than those agreed at Nice.
"We have a reduction of the Commission to 15 and we have a two-tier Commission. Under Nice, the evil day was put off until we had reached 27 and then we would decide by unanimity what way it would rotate."
Mr Gormley was among a number of representatives at the convention who demanded yesterday that a protocol incorporating the Euratom treaty into the constitution should be dropped.
Portugal's prime minister called yesterday for a national referendum on the proposed new constitution. Mr Jose Manuel Durao Barroso told parliament the vote would be part of government efforts to gain support for the draft constitution.
- (Reuters)
