EU INSTITUTIONS IN ARTICLE 13

EU institutions in Article 13



EU institutions in Article 13

Introduction

In this paper I am going to discuss about the European Union which is absolutely evolving coalition of fifteen European countries to boost economic collaboration amidst its members.

This item aspires at recounting and investigating some of the most significant institutional facets on the Draft European Constitution (DEC), as well as its background. Although it is today (February 2005) hard to know if the Constitution will ever enter into force, an institutional analysis, focused on some of the most important institutions, is in my view of the utmost importance. This is the case especially because the Draft Constitution contains some significant changes in relation to the connection between the Council of Ministers, the Commission and the European assembly, of a kind hitherto unknown. And furthermore, even if the Draft Constitution should not ever enter into force, for some cause, the very concept to put the diverse treaties in one lone article rather than of in all the different living treaties may still be intriguing, for a number of causes (including the way in which this new article has been prepared).

Against that backdrop, this article aspires at dealing with four institutional key matters in the new Constitution, namely, apart from the relations between the above-mentioned three organisations, the topic of QMV (qualified most voting) in the two Councils, the division of competences between the EU and the constituent States, in specific the scope of the supremacy of EU regulation before nationwide law and, eventually, the changes that are suggested in the constitution concerning EU legislation and lawful actions, their adoption and interior hierarchy.

A Historical Survey

When the proposal for a new Draft Constitution from the so-called European Convention, who had worked with the proposal for almost one and a half year, was finally presented on 18 July 2003, this was perhaps not the end of a very long journey, since it took another year before the text was given its current, final form and it will still not be ratified for another few years, if ever. But it was decisively the result of a development towards farther European integration, now manifested farthermore in legal terms, with some characteristic institutional features, that had started almost two decades before.

The Convention itself was a rather unusual gathering, meeting regularly - at least monthly - in well-attended sessions in the EU Parliament in Brussels, consisting of more than hundred members representing not only the existing and future Member States but also the different EU institutions, working totally in public and much involved, not least through the internet, in a dialogue with the so-called civil society. The number of proposals approaching from the eleven different working assemblies as well as other actors, who responded to original proposals from the conference, may furthermore be clarified by the Convention's clear employed methods and the gigantic interest that its work accumulated from the media. The very idea of a conference organising the work of the Constitution was here ...