[A-List] EU integration struggles

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Hari Kumar asked:

i) Is it in any way progressive for individual nations to attempt to
'withdraw' from the EU?

To which Mark responded:

Whether it's progressive or not, it isn't on the agenda and is not a
meaningful political prospect.

-----

Which is not to say that the article below indicates that it is on the
agenda, but merely to record that mechanisms are being put into place to
allow for presumably orderly withdrawal.


'Skeleton' EU constitution calls for strong president
By Stephen Castle in Brussels
The Independent, 28 October 2002

A "skeleton" constitution for Europe will raise the prospect of a powerful
new EU president, a congress of national and European parliamentarians and
an "exit clause" for nations that want to quit.

The draft document, released today, will be the first concrete sign of the
thinking of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who is
chairing a convention of 105 politicians investigating the future of Europe.

The document will identify the central issues for a revamped EU and devise a
structure for a new treaty. However, many of the most sensitive points will
be left unresolved.

Mr Giscard's blueprint will suggest that the EU has one unified treaty and
gain a "single legal personality" - allowing the EU to sign treaties and sit
on international bodies such as the United Nations. The current complex
structure that divides policy areas into separate "pillars" will be axed.

The document will accommodate the possibility of a new president of the
European Council, opening the way for Tony Blair's preference, a powerful
leader drawn from the ranks for former prime ministers or presidents. The
selected person might be approved by a new congress that would meet
periodically to take big decisions.

But it will have no detailed proposal for a new EU president, which is
contentious because smaller member states believe it will weaken the power
of the European Commission.

It will also have provision for an "exit clause", allowing nations that want
to leave the EU to do so. At present, no such mechanism exists, although the
EC treaty was amended in 1984 to exclude Greenland, which had won home rule
from Denmark.

Again, little detail will be settled and one crucial issue may be left
unresolved: whether nations which fail to ratify treaties would, in effect,
exclude themselves.

Most of the specifics have been left vague because the convention has still
to reach consensus on most of its work. The document will be designed, in
part, to provoke a debate and help discover a consensus. Mr Giscard's
convention is due to finish its work next summer but its conclusions must be
agreed by the heads of all EU governments.

It may also open the way for the EU to be renamed - Mr Giscard has already
voiced a preference for "United Europe", and a slogan to stress Europe's
main objectives, such as "justice, solidarity and liberty".

Mr Giscard's document follows the Brussels EU summit last week, which
brought strong signs of a Franco- German rapprochement.

Paris and Berlin now plan to produce a joint paper on the future of Europe,
probably in time for the 40th anniversary of the 1963 treaty that bound the
two nations.