Friday

29th Mar 2024

A Federal Europe would mean "Byzantine" conditions

"Project non-paper," on "A possible draft of a Fundamental Treaty," is the title of a document which has come to Giulio Tremonti, Italian minister of economic affairs "by way of Anglo-Saxon paths," he says in an interview on Sunday in the Italian paper, La Stampa.

The paper, which deals with a proposed text for an European Constitution, is purported to have come from the EU Convention. But Mr. Tremonti, slightly ironically, suspects that the paper may not be what it seems, as it is not to be found on the Convention's home page.

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According to Giulio Tremonti, the document lays out 11 points: legal personality, goals and fundamental principles of the union, competences, citizenship, institutional decisions and legal instruments, judiciary control, balance in financial dispositions, internal and foreign agreements, strenghtened cooperation, general and final decisions.

Mr Tremonti points out that this document puts forward the positions af Giuliano Amato, former Italian prime minister and present vice president of the Convention on the Future of Europe, and he criticises the lack of transparency in the process going on in the Convention.

Convention is a laboratory

Asked by La Stampa whether the vice president and the other members of the convention are not entitled to have an opinion on their own on the future of the EU, Mr Tremonti answers:

"Absolutely. The problem is not whether the intergovernmental or the federalist model is the right one. It is that, in my opinion, it is not the Convention that should draw up a final complete text; it should only hypothesize on solutions of various problems. The Convention is not the place where the Constitution should be written, the Intergovernmental Conference should not be limited to ratifying. In other words: the Convention is a laboratory, the Conference is the political room."

Creating \"Byzantine\" decision-making

Mr. Tremonti says that he is against the document's idea of creating a single state instead of an union of nations, of making Brussels the counterpart of Washington, because that would put democracy in peril by creating "Byzantine" decision-making processes among the states, the governments, the Commission, the EU Parliament, which would be played off against one another and shortcut democracy, resulting in a tangle of "quasi" or "almost" contracts.

The federalist model is a shadow model

Would the federal hypothesis really lead to disaster, asks La Stampa, and Mr Tremonti answers:

"It is strange, in the debate on Europe the idea of a union bestween nation states has been sketched quite completely. I was really one of the first to speak in favour of it in La Stampa, underlining that at this stage the intergovernmental model has nothing to do with nationalism, with nostalgic longings, with reactionary absolutism; it does in fact represent the opposite insofar as the state is the container of democracy; you may find states without democracy, but not yet democracy without a state. This idea of Europe is transparent. The federalist model is a shadow model. It appears, disappears, reappears. As if those who favour it had not got the courage to make it. Some time ago it was expressed by the German foreign minister, Fischer, and soon afterwards it returned to the underground, but now it seems to emerge once more."

Europe is a chance, not an enemy

Asked whether the Stability Pact should be revised or not, Mr. Tremonti answers evasively:

"In the ECOFIN council I have always followed one criterium: discretion, discussions among all of us, official communication only by way of the official presidence of the period. This is the intergovernmental model. And I am, as I have said, in favour of the intergovernmental method."

In another interview in La Stampa on Monday, Mr. Tremonti's views are answered by another Italian member of the Convention, Marco Follini. He says the suspicious attitude of the minister of economic affairs lead to nothing, and he says that "Europe is a chance, not an enemy".

The document was first made known to the public in June and the spokesman of the Convention on EU future, Nikolaus Meyer Landrut, admitted the leaked plan for a basic Treaty, was drafted by the Secretariat of the Convention. He claimed the paper had not been seen and discussed neither by the Convention’s chairman Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, nor by the Presidium. The Convention‘s spokesman explained that the sketch of the European Constitution had no official status, as it was a working document.

Leaked plan sparks power questions in Convention

The spokesman of the Convention on EU future admitted on Friday the leaked plan for a basic Treaty, obtained by EUobserver, was drafted by the Secretariat of the Convention, but claims the paper has not been seen and discussed neither by the Convention’s chairman, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, nor by the Presidium. The Convention‘s spokesman Nikolaus Meyer Landrut explained that the sketch of the European Constitution had no official status, it is only a working document.

The revelation the entourage of Mr Giscard d’Estaing drafted a scheme for a future Treaty, despite Mr Giscard’s claims that nothing was to be drafted before the fall, as the Convention is at the listening phase, triggered strong reactions across the EU.

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