Airstrip One

Why the European Convention is becoming more important - 3rd December 2002, 21.46

For many, the European Convention has not acquired significance because its role is perceived as a consolidation of existing treaties rather than as an arena for institutional reform. The latter was diaried for negotiation at the 2004 intergovernmental conference after the constitutional convention had finished its work. That model has been overtaken by events.

The convention is really becoming the actual negotiation that was supposed to await the "inter-governmental conference" planned for 2004. Germany and France have made this plain by making their foreign ministers delegates to the convention.

In the early phases of negotiation, issues of controversy are chosen to define positions even though there are common themes uniting all parties. The FT has adopted this argument for defence in the current spat between Great Britain and the renewed Franco-German relationship, by focussing upon the complementarity between the rapid reaction forces proposed for the European Union and NATO. However, the article does downplay the most important component of the continentals' view: that defence should be communitised.

The other issue coming to the fore is the role of taxation where most of the EU hope to communitise corporation taxes and value added taxes for the purpose of smoothing the single market (where the European state is the single purchaser and the single provider).