EUROPEAN CONVENTION: DIVISIONS EMERGING AMONG STATES OVER CONVENTION'S OBJECTIVES.

The European Convention Praesidium will seek to clarify the organisation of work for the next two months on February 26, taking account of impending scheduling and political difficulties. The plenary session on February 27-28 will doubtless be the first test of the credibility of the timetable laid down by the Member States at the Laeken Summit in December 2001, aiming to wrap up the Convention's work by June 2003: no fewer than 1038 amendments to the 16 articles presented to Convention members have been tabled, and the manner in which discussions proceed will give an idea of the Convention's capacity to make progress, not only in deliberation, but also in the concrete drafting of a constitutional Treaty. In order to avoid Convention members merely picking over their amendments, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing proposes to cut the duration of interventions and favour answers and debate.

All the current Member States' governments have tabled amendments. National MPs have in certain cases endorsed their government's contribution (e.g. Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Slovakia and Malta), and in others, that of MEPs, whilst a number of Convention members have signed contradictory amendments. Overall, the amendments do not challenge the general architecture proposed by the Presidium.

Comments on the EU's values and objectives throw up a measure of support for a social market economy and calls for the promotion of services of general interest and an extension of the co-ordination of economic policies to employment and taxation. Several government representatives from the Member States (the United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Denmark) and the candidate countries (Slovakia and Estonia) are keen to see all reference to the word "federal" removed from Article 1.

An analysis of the amendments tabled highlights the feverish activity of British Government representative Peter Hain, who appears to deny the existence of any Union competence on Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), economic co-ordination or justice and home affairs (JHA). Instead, the Union should be confined to a role of co-operation in these areas. Mr Hain also rejects any consolidation of the jurisprudence of the European Union Court of Justice, including on the primacy of Community law. He therefore only accepts the single legal personality of the EU if CFSP and JHA are specifically excluded from the ambit of the Court of Justice. Backed in this instance...