Intergovernmental Conference Living up to Expectations

12.00.00am GMT Wed 29th Oct 2003

The Intergovernmental Conference is living up to its expectations says Andrew Duff MEP, constitutional affairs spokesman for the European Liberal Democrats (ELDR).

In a statement today, Mr Duff said:-

"The IGC is proving all too predictable in that it is duplicating the work of the Convention, but at an inferior level. The discussions among ministers and officials at the IGC have already taken place over a longer period and in much greater depth in the wider and more open Convention. Governments are putting forward arguments that have either been integrated already in the Convention's final package deal or discarded as being impracticable and not in the overall, common interest of the Union.

"It is not good enough now for governments simply to advance their own preferred proposals to specific constitutional issues. Instead they have to be able to command a larger consensus among all twenty-five governments, the Commission and the European Parliament than the one achieved by the Convention.

"Individual initiatives from sectoral Councils are also most unwelcome. The reactionary proposals from Ecofin earlier this week, that would have removed parliamentary control of the EU budget and condemned the Union to years of destructive haggling over money, is a case in point. Governments should present a united, settled policy on the whole constitution, not a shopping list of differing and contradictory sectoral positions. The IGC can only work if all governments are internally coherent and manage to stick to the line. Weak and divided governments means a failed IGC.

"Finally, governments cannot be allowed to pick selectively from the Treaty of Nice. The Convention either was given a mandate to renegotiate the whole settlement or it was not. The fact is that the setting up of the Convention was in itself a rejection of Nice. Everyone knows this. If we go back to Nice, we go back to squalid casino-like politics. Europe as a whole will be the loser - again."