Introduction
The European constitutional convention, simply called the European Convention, was convened
in 2002 in order to revise and consolidate existing European treaties, which have formed the
constitutional framework of the European Union since its beginnings in 1957. The Convention
was a departure from the traditional way of revising the EU treaties through Intergovernmental
Conferences (IGCs) in which each country was endowed with veto powers over the final
outcome. The IGC procedure had led to extreme outcomes in the Nice Treaty in 2000. The
intense disagreements between large and small states were resolved by including provisions to
the liking of each group with the result of creating institutions which were difficult to work with
(Tsebelis and Yataganas 2002). Therefore, governments decided to convene a Convention on the
Future of Europe. According to the Laeken declaration, the task of this Convention was "to
consider the key issues arising for the Union’s future development and try to identify the various
possible responses" (European Council 2001). The governments also decided on the overall
composition of the 105-member Convention. It was dominated by members of national
parliaments (56 members, including opposition and anti EU parties) and representatives from
member state governments themselves (28 members). Other members included a delegation from
the European Parliament (16 members) and the European Commission (2 members). Whereas
each of these component groups chose their respective representatives, the Presidency of the
Convention was picked by the governments themselves. They appointed former French president
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as President and former Prime Ministers Giuliano Amato (Italy) and
Jean-Luc Dehaene (Belgium) as Vice-Presidents.
In the history of the EU there have been several summits that ended without results (e.g.
the European Council failed to make a deal over the EU's long term budget at the EU summit in
June 2005). During the most recent IGC, the meeting in Rome (2003) led to strong disagreements
2
Convention