In a one-day event national and European civil society representatives got together to assess the their advocacy campaigns on the EU Convention.
Jean-Luc Dehaene answered the questions from the floor focusing on what he presented as a suscessful Constitutional text.
Trying to cope with the reminders of ’what was not in’, Dehaene instead the participants to ’read their national constitutions, some issues are better dealt with at national level’.
He also suggested that civil society should advocate for a more flexible way of changing Part III of the Treaty (policies) rather than trying to get everything into an initial list in Part I.
Regarding the IGC working method, Dehaene said that they will receive the draft text, evaluate it and decide if the Convention can have two more weeks and the issues they should clean up.
However, Dehaene reminded civil society that there is no obligation to have a new Treaty, as enlargement can proceed on the basis of Nice.
’Much depends on the pressure on the IGC’ Dehaene ensured ’and there will be pressure from the Convention as well’.
The Convention has been characterised by its transparency, but if the IGC is composed of traditional diplomats, it is unlikely that there will be much information being released on the progress of the negotiations, apart from official press conferences.
The Social Platform will issue on the 18 June a letter to the IGC on their assessment of the Constitutional Text. A website has been launched for the Act4Europe campaign.
