Mobilising Politics and Society?

The EU Convention's Impact on Southern Europe

Sonia Lucarelli, Claudio Radaelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415347990
• eBook ISBN: 9781136873157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Mobilising Politics and Society offers a timely analysis of the European Union Convention's impact on the domestic political systems, and civil society in Southern Europe. It provides country chapters on Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Turkey. All chapters follow a common scientific template, in order to offer material for genuine cross-country comparison. In addition, the volume contains horizontal chapters on three important issues: the mobilisation of intellectuals; sub-national politics; and the participation of women. The editors compare results of the country chapters in their conclusions. The book contains documentation on the EU Convention and South European participants.This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal South European Society and Politics.

The European Convention: A Process of Mobilization?

SONIA LUCARELLI and CLAUDIO M. RADAELLI

INTRODUCTION: A NEW DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE OF EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE?

It would be wrong to see the European Convention on the Future of Europe as a simple transmission belt between one treaty negotiation and another.¹ In fact, it represented a discontinuity in European Union (EU) patterns of governance. Although one of the main tasks of the Convention was to pave the way for the intergovernmental conference (IGC) opened under the Italian Presidency of the EU on 4 October 2003, one cannot place it in parenthesis and trace a straight line between Nice and the 2003 IGC. And it would be wrong to reduce the Convention to its output – that is, the draft constitution.² In this essay, we set out to examine the Convention as a political process, specifically a process of mobilization.

There are several elements that make the Convention – at least potentially – an episode of discontinuity in European governance. Not a total discontinuity – as one of the aims of this essay is to situate the Convention in recent shifts in European discourses and practice of governance – but certainly an innovation with major potential. In this essay we discuss the form and content of innovation and distinguish between the potential and results of the Convention as a process of mobilization. In doing so, we situate the reports contained in this volume in relation to the main questions in our project.

Let us start with the ambitions of the exercise in the context of challenges from ‘within’ and from the ‘outside’. The European Convention held its opening session on 28 February 2002 with the hard task of working out the European response to two major challenges: to bring the EU closer to its citizens and make it able to ‘shoulder its responsibilities in the governance of globalization’ (European Council, 2001; see Laeken Declaration on the Future of the European Union in Annex 1). The two tasks were closer than it might appear at first glance, if one follows the European Council’s claim that European citizens call for ‘a clear, open, effective, democratically controlled Community … which points the way ahead for the world’ (European Council 2001). Put differently, the major task of the Convention – according to its mandate – was to rethink the EU and to shape an international actor with a democratic legitimacy to be strengthened both in terms of input and output (drawing on the distinction made by Scharpf 1997). In short, responsiveness and effectiveness were required.

In order to achieve this aim, the Laeken European Council listed 56 questions regarding key aspects of institutional transformation, but, most importantly, Laeken set an unprecedented process of transformation. The Convention’s peculiar composition (see Annex 2) and working method were shaped to mark a difference with the exclusively inter-governmental method of Treaty revision, dominated by the member states and predominantly focused on technical issues. Pressures from within (the challenge of democratizing a post-national polity, adapting to the needs of an enlarged Europe, and efficiency) and from outside (globalization and foreign policy crises) demanded a qualitative step with respect to the previous attempt at shaping the Union for enlargement (the Treaty of Nice). This led to the big question of ‘what kind of Europe do we want?’

Such a new constitutive momentum could not be confined to a group of state representatives and technocrats. It had to involve and mobilize a larger public. The convention that produced the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Eriksen, Fossum and Menéndez 2001; Menéndez 2002) was rather successful. Thus, a similar quasi-constitutive assembly was organized. It was decided that the chairman of the Convention would be Mr Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and the vice-chairmen Mr Giuliano Amato and Mr Jean-Luc Dehaene. The Assembly would be composed of 15 representatives of the heads of state or government of the member states, 30 members of national parliaments (two from each Member State), 16 members of the European Parliament (EP) and two Commission representatives. The accession candidate countries would be represented in the same way as the member states, but would not be able to prevent any consensus which might emerge among the member states. Additionally, three representatives of the Economic and Social Committee, three of the European social partners, six of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the European Ombudsman would attend as observers. The creation of a more restricted praesidium (composed of the chairman, vice-chairmen and nine members of the plenum) and of working groups would facilitate the work of such a large assembly. A parallel Convention of the Youth would elaborate proposals to the main Convention, thereby securing the participation of the new generation of European citizens.

However, the idea of social participation was not limited to the composition of the Convention and to the Youth Convention. A forum open to organizations representing civil society (the social partners, the business world, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academia, etc.) was established. The aim was to articulate the Forum as a network of organizations and individuals in regular contact with the Convention. One should not be misled, though, by the purely consultative character of the Forum. True, it would be difficult to claim that the Forum played a substantial role in shaping the final result (that is, the Draft Constitutional Treaty). However, the Forum should be assessed in terms of process. In this vein, it provided a useful channel for public debate on the themes of the Convention.

There was also – in the Forum and in the whole of the Convention process – a commitment to ‘listen’ to the society. Only after having listened would the Convention turn to ‘reflection’ and ultimately ‘making proposals’. Undeniably, this represented an important innovation, a discontinuity with the technocratic tradition of EU politics (Radaelli 1999).

Overall, the Convention was designed as a political body with two essential aims. One was a goal defined in terms of output – that is, the constitutional draft. The other was all about process – that is, ‘mobilizing politics and society’. One can also see the latter goal as an attempt to create a European public sphere in which citizens discuss Europe and thereby construct their identity as Europeans (following Habermas 2001). Indeed, Habermas argued that a constitutional debate is the best instrument to start the process that would eventually lead to a European demos. From this perspective, identity, political community and institutions are in a process of mutual construction and cannot be considered independently from each other (see also Cerutti 2001; 2003).

In this respect the Convention was a crucial discontinuity – as Daniela Piana argues in her essay for this volume – in terms of symbolic value. The preparation of a constitution for Europe was an exercise in identity politics in which Europeans asked themselves ‘who are we?’ (the political and cultural identity of ‘Europe’), ‘where are we going to?’ (the models most suitable for the design of the European political house) and ‘what do we need to get there?’ (in terms of governance capacity and specific instruments).

As a matter of fact, the Convention was not simply an exercise in terms of proposing ideas for treaty revisions but an attempt to work on the idea of a constitutio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Notes on Contributors
• Acronyms
• Preface
• 1 The European Convention: A Process of Mobilization?
• 2 Constructing European Constitutional Discourse? Arguments for Common Values in the European Convention
• 3 Italy: A Special Case and a Mixed Record
• 4 The Spanish Case: Who Was Mobilized and How?
• 5 The Spanish Intellectual Debate on the Future of the EU: Who Was Mobilized and with What Effects?
• 6 What ‘Europe’? Portugal’s Reactive Adaptation to European Institutional Changes
• 7 Greece: On New, European Tracks?
• 8 The Debate on the Future of Europe in Malta: Moving to Centre Stage
• 9 Old and New Patterns of Domestic Politics in the European Perspective: The Debate in the Republic of Cyprus
• 10 Turkey on the Edges of the Convention on the ‘Future of Europe’
• 11 Regions and the Convention on the Future of Europe
• 12 The Participation and Representation of Women in the Debate on the Future of the European Union
• Annex 1-3
• Index