DOSEI project examines EU constitution-building
Following the 'no' votes in the referendums on the European constitution in France and the Netherlands, concern has been expressed in many quarters about citizens' attitudes towards the EU and the constitutional future of Europe. While a number of Member States are continuing with the ratification process, including Luxembourg, which welcomed a 'yes' vote in on 10 July, five countries have opted to postpone their referendums, and it remains unclear whether or not the constitution will be ratified in its present form. Despite this, understanding how the present constitution emerged and how the ratification process is being carried out is of great societal and scientific relevance. Whatever the eventual outcome, it will have a substantial effect on the sovereignty of an ever-growing number of countries and on the lives of their citizens. In order to gain such an understanding, the Commission funded the DOSEI project (domestic structures and European integration) under the 'Improving human research potential' priority of the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5). The project, which had its final conference on 20 June, brought together 20 political scientists from eight European and US universities in order to study the process of EU constitution, building from the Laeken Convention in 2002, which drew up the original terms for the constitution, to the current ratification process. Most of the project's analyses focused on the negotiation stage of the constitution during the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in 2003 and 2004, led by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. The series of reports prepared by the DOSEI partners and published on their website looks at issues such as the strategies used during the negotiations, which parties 'won or lost' compared with the Nice Treaty, and whether the constraints of domestic ratification influenced the final results. Thus, the DOSEI project has established a unique archive documenting the positions of the more than 200 actors involved in drafting the constitution on the most contested issues, from Member State governments and political parties to Members of the European Parliament and the Commission. One paper, for example, looks at the role of the Commission during the negotiations and asks to what extent its preferences are reflected in the constitution. Also, what explanations can be given for its successes and/or failures in this regard? The Commission's principal objectives during the negotiations, according to Stanford University's Christophe Crombez who wrote the report, were fourfold: to establish a uniform legislative procedure (codecision), to generalise the qualified-majority voting rule in the Council, to maintain the one Commissioner per Member State rule, and to preserve the 'Community method' within the EU, including the Commission's role as the sole initiator of EU legislation. In Professor Crombez's opinion, while the Commission was keen to promote greater democracy, efficiency and transparency within other EU institutions - for example by generalising qualified majority voting and the codecision procedure -in sticking to the one Commissioner per Member State rule it failed to see the need to make its own functioning more efficient. 'None of the [Commission's] proposed reforms in any of these areas [...] can really be described as drastic changes, with the possible exception of the generalization of the qualified majority rule,' argues Professor Crombez. 'The Commission chose to pursue a cautious route rather than to stand at the forefront and fight for more powers, a dramatic increase in its democratic legitimacy and a serious reduction in size.' And despite having set itself relatively modest ambitions, Professor Crombez believes that the Commission achieved only partial success in achieving them. Its monopoly on the right of initiative was left intact, and qualified majority voting and codecision were extended, even if the extensions fell short of the Commission's expectations. Rather than maintaining the rule of one Commissioner for each Member State, however, the overall number of Commissioners is set to be reduced. Furthermore, it failed to achieve its goals with regards to changing the selection process for the Commission, which will remain essentially the same under the new constitution. 'This disappointing result for the Commission can be explained by four factors,' concludes Professor Crombez. 'One: the Commission did not have any formal powers at the IGC; two: it bungled its approach to the negotiations and squandered any informal influence it may have had as a result; three: it was an outlier in the negotiations, its push for a more federal EU was supported only by Parliament and just three Member States; and four: the Commission's influence in the EU is fading in general.' However, Professor Crombez believes that the move towards more qualified majority voting, including in the Commission appointment process, could create a dynamic that will lead to the selection of effective Commissions. 'Reducing the democratic deficit by changing the Commission appointment process thus seems to be the road to follow to increase the Commission's effectiveness,' he concludes. The Commission's role in the constitution building process is just one of the areas covered by the DOSEI project, and the partners are planning the publication of a full length book in 2006 entitled 'Policy-making processes and the European constitution: a comparative study of Member States and Accession Countries'. The team hopes that the analyses it has undertaken will offer valuable new insights and understanding of the current constitutional process and any similar initiatives in the future.