Airstrip One

The European Convention

Giscard D'Estaing and the Praesidium are now retiring for their summer break after a long debate keeping the bureaucratese simmering for the autumn resolutions. They have managed to set up six working groups: Subsidiarity, The Charter/European Convention of Human Rights, Legal Personality, National Parliaments, Complementary Competencies and Economic Governance. For a consultative body, these people know how to emulate the Founding Fathers.

However, in June and July, two further working groups are due to be established in external action and "freedom and security".

Focussing on the former, the Convention stated that the EU should function with a stronger voice on the global stage and debated the issue of a common versus a single foreign policy. Apart from the idea of a single representative, mooted by the Commission earlier, the delegates wished to introduce qualified majority voting into the common security and foreign policy, allowing nations to opt out through 'constructive abstention', with a 'coalition of the willing' setting up a position so long as no one nation objected.

On the issue of security, most of the delegates favoured more moralistic centralisation, increasing the interoperability of each nation's armed forces, but only taking action under a UN mandate. More dangerously, they wished to bring the armaments trade under the aegis of the Treaty and establishing a 'European armaments agency'. A very adverse development for British foreign policy, in this area.

The Convention is proposing developments along the lines set out last year by the national governments but, when they are fleshed out, provide further evidence for the centripetal trend towards a European policy that hollows out and eventually replaces national voices. The devil is in the detail.

* Note that all EU documents are in pdf format so Adobe Acrobat is required to read the texts.