In a follow-up to the email briefing on Friday 28 February 2003, please find below some notes from the Convention plenary "informal" session of Wednesday 5th of March 2003: Debate on articles 8-16, presided by Vice-president Mr Giuliano Amato, PES.
In order to structure the debate, the Praesidium suggested that the discussion focus on a set of questions on each article. The written questions on articles 11, 12 and 15 were as follows:
Exclusive competences, article 11
(a) Should the "exclusive competences" category be renamed "Union competences"? would the definition remain the same?
(b) Should the category be extended (some Convention members have mentioned the internal market, economic and social cohesion or the financing of the Union)?
(c) Should some areas, such as freedoms, or some sensitive aspects of commercial policy be regarded as shared competences, as suggested by other Convention members?
(d) Could the subsidiarity principle apply to this category or to some of these competences?
Shared competences, article 12
(a) Since the "shared competences" category is a residual one, is there any need to list the principal areas covered?
(b) If this list is to remain non-exhaustive, should some areas be added nonetheless (some Convention members have mentioned, for example, non-discrimination, gender equality, services of general interest, the fiscal dimension of the internal market, protection against disasters and animal protection etc.)?
Areas for supporting action, article 15
(a) Should there be an exhaustive list of areas for supporting action, or not?
(b) How should this category relate to that of shared competences? (Some Convention members have suggested not ruling out all harmonisation in these areas, however minimal, from the outset, whilst others have suggested indicating that some shared competences could also give rise to supporting
actions).
Public Health
In the debate, the interventions that mentioned Public Health were as follow:
Ms Pascale Andreani (Alternate representative of the French Government, EPP-ED): she was against including Public Health in article 11 (Union’s exclusive competences).
A representative from a candidate country: Public Health touches issues in the three categories.
Mr Paolo Ponzano (Alternate to Commissioner Vitorino, non-attached): ECJ judgements on tobacco products that ruled that it was not the point if the Union had exclusive competences but if the Union could act to keep certain issues at the Union level.
Mr Bobby McDonagh (Alternate representative of the Irish Government, non-attached): if we leave Public Health in art. 12 it looks like we want to interfere in national issues, but if we move it to article 15 it might give the impression that we can’t harmonise the legislation anyway, it is a dilemma. We can either leave it where it is or move it to the supporting measures.
Mr Giuliano Amato (Vice-president of the Praesidium): why not mention Public Health in Part I of the Treaty, if we leave it to Part II the citizen will have more trouble to find it.
Mrs Teija Tiilikainen (Representative from the Finnish Government, non-attached): she agrees with Mr Bobby McDonagh regarding article 12.
Mr Alain Lamassoure MEP (EPP-ED): alongside Public Health we have to include fight against drugs. This should be done in Part II of the Treaty, we don’t need a list in Part I.
As a general comment about the debate, Convention members are looking for consensus and compromise.
Whereas earlier they were clearly stating their opinions on where various issues should be put in the treaty (Articles 2/3 or 11/12), now the basic questions appears to be whether it would be better to have a list of policy areas in Article 12 (Shared competencies) or if Article 12 should be very short and leave the detailed list of policy areas to Part II of the treaty which focuses on specific policies.
EPHA comment
Although a majority of interventions supported the idea of public health as a shared competence, many of these were restricted to the necessity for tackling bioterrorism, communication diseases (cross-border problems) and WHO regulations.
As the debate went on, some of those members who had initially stated that they did not think that public health should be a shared competence (e.g.. Ms Piia-Nora Kauppi) there was gradually a recognition that public health covers a wide range of issues, and that on reflection it would be appropriate for the EU to act on cross-border health threats.
This would be an opportunity to provide ’new arguments’ to the Convention members in the coming weeks.
The opponents of public health as any type of EU competence, although smaller in number, expressed strongly held views and were very firm on their position.
This indicates that there is still some advocacy to be carried out particularly towards those who accept the role of the EU in public health for communicable diseases/bioterrorism to explain the importance of having a ’non-restrictive’ version of Article 152 that would allow the EU to act on the greatest health threats to citizens eg; cancer, cardiovascular diseases, obesity etc, which are all non communicable.
There were strong recommendations from the UK and Irish Delegates who emphasized that the Treaty must be understandable to citizens, who will be looking for the Treaty to reflect their concerns such as public health, full employment, environment etc.
This is why it is important for these issues to be clearly identified in the beginning part of the Treaty rather than being buried towards the end of the text.
A second ’informal’ meeting is scheduled on 26th of March (to continue the debate on articles 1-7, chaired by Mr Dehaene).
The next official meeting of the Convention is 17 and 18 March 2003 when the Praesidium will present new Treaty articles on EU policies.
