EUROPEAN CONVENTION: GISCARD PRESENTS OUTLINE OF DRAFT CONSTITUTION.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing urged Heads of State and Government to ensure that their representatives on the Convention lent him their "active support". He recalled that the Convention's mandate prevents its ruling on political content, but remarked that work on merging the Treaties, on the basis of a single legal personality for the EU, implies the modification of some 136 articles and the rewriting of about 73 others. The mobilisation of Member States ahead of the IGC in this rephrasing of articles therefore appears important.

This single Treaty would consist of three parts: constitutional provisions, EU policies and their implementation, final and general provisions designed mainly to guarantee legal continuity with previous treaties.

Under this scenario, the constitutional part would include:

- A preamble.

- The definition of the Union, its values, its legal nature and its future name.

- The objectives pursued by the EU.

- Fundamental rights, according to procedures for their inclusion in the Treaty put forward by the relevant working group.

- The content of European citizenship, exercised in parallel with national citizenship.

- A precise listing of EU responsibilities.

- A list of European Institutions.

- A description of procedures and instruments for EU action.

- Bases for European democratic life.

On this last point, Mr Giscard d'Estaing highlighted to EU leaders the need to ensure "greater effectiveness in the European missions of the Council and the Commission" and to define "more visible democratic legitimacy based on the notion of dual legitimacy expressed through the European Parliament and national parliaments", without explicitly mentioning the notion of a Congress. In this context he listed the institutional questions that need to be resolved: Presidency of the...