Convention to tackle external policy and defence

The European Convention will deal with the issues of external policy and defence, and set up four new working groups at its next working session on 10-11 July.

The Convention’s Presidium intends to launch four new Working Groups at the July plenary session of the Convention, to deal with:

• justice and internal security;
• external policy;
• defence;
• simplification of legislative procedure.

The ten Working Groups are expected to present their reports to the Convention in September or October, containing elements that could be introduced in the Basic or Constitutional Treaty that will be drafted by the Convention.

In October, the Convention will try to define the broad structure of the Basic or Constitutional Treaty. The Convention’s Secretariat has already drafted a non-paper that could serve as a proposal for the Treaty.

The non-paper consists of 11 chapters:

• Establishment of the legal personality of the EU;
• Aim and fundamental principles of the EU, possibly integrating the Charter of Fundamental Rights;
• Division of competences between the Member States and the EU;
• Citizenship of the Union;
• Institutional framework of the EU;
• Decision-making procedures and legal instruments;
• Jurisdictional control by the European Court of Justice;
• Financial and budgetary positions, including in the areas of justice and home affairs, and foreign and security policy;
• Conclusion of agreements between the EU and third countries or international organisations;
• Enhanced co-operation;
• General and final provisions (accession of new members, modalities of revision of the Treaties, seats of institutions, linguistic regimes, etc).

The Convention will then have to deal with the question of what the relation between the new Treaty and the existing Treaties should be. There is a danger that by merging the existing Treaties with the new Constititutional Treaty, some of theacquis communautairecould be lost, according to members of the Presidium.

One of the innovations of the Constitutional Treaty would be to establish a legal personality of the EU as a whole, as opposed to today’s legal personality of the European Community, which excludes the areas of external, security and defence policy, and justice and home affairs.

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