Liberals criticise Draft Articles for lack of logic, courage and clarity

12.00.00am GMT Mon 10th Mar 2003

The Liberals in the Convention have tabled a number of substantive amendments to the latest batch of draft constitutional articles (Articles 24 to 33).

The main thrust of the amendments from the Liberal caucus is to accentuate the separation of the legislative from the executive arms of EU governance and to ensure that nothing can become law that is not passed both by the Council and also the European Parliament.

Andrew Duff M.E.P, who chairs the ELDR group in the Convention, criticised the quality of the drafting by the Praesidium:

"It is surprising that so many things in the Praesidium's drafting are unclear as to their intended effect. These draft articles fail to spell out who does what and how in the Union.

"Too often the Praesidium fights shy of following the logic of what the Convention is asking for: plain language, clear thinking and a determined effort to improve EU democracy. It needs to demonstrate more courage.

"Some member states apparently want to continue to hide the governance of the EU behind political obfuscation and legalistic formulae.

The Convention must not be bullied by those of its members who fear to tell the truth to the citizen about the scale and scope of European integration. People need to know how they are governed by whom and from where. That is what the Constitution can and must do."

A summary of the main Liberal amendments is as follows:

Article 24 To include a new type of organic law for institutional questions such as the own resources system of the Union; to highlight the new class of secondary legislation, retitled 'delegated law'; to separate out more clearly legislative from executive acts.

Article 25 To spell out in detail the legislative procedure; to deny the Council the right to legislate on its own.

Article 27 To lay down in detail how the legislature, composed of Parliament and Council, can scrutinise the Commission's use of delegated law, including a call-back procedure.

Article 28 To abolish the present system of 'comitology' by consolidating the Commission powers to implement EU law.

Article 31 To delete the provision for separate instruments in police and criminal justice policy.

Article 32 To oblige the Council to spell out how each government intends to transpose framework law into their domestic jurisdiction. The same objectives also inform substantial Liberal amendments to the draft Protocols on subsidiarity and on the role of national parliaments.