CHAPTER 21: THE COMPLEXITY OF REGIONS The main proposals in the constitutional treaty are:
1. The EU will have a president. He or she will be chosen by the heads of national governments and be the main public face of the EU.
2. The President of the European Commission, the EU's administrative body, will have more authority and pick members of his/her team of commissioners from candidates in all EU countries. Each state will no longer be guaranteed the right to a seat on the European Commission.
3. The EU will have a foreign minister, whose job will be to represent the EU in issues of foreign affairs, security and defence. The divisions within Europe over the Iraq war and the Israeli/Lebanon conflict in 2006 suggest the role will be extremely difficult.
Ratified
Nearly ratified Ratifying soon
4. Common EU policies and standards will be extended into many new areas, e.g. external border controls, asylum policy and public health. National veto rights will be reduced. Some states want the EU in time to win authority over the most sensitive areas, such as taxation and defence. Other states are determined to block that idea.
Ratification delayed Undecided
Rejected
5. The European Parliament will have much greater law-making powers, together with the Council of Ministers.
6. The parliament of each country will have a lesser role as more law-making responsibilities will shift to EU level. However, they will still be able to halt any unauthorised moves by EU bodies to take over certain areas of national sovereignty.
Sovereignty and the EU constitution The proposed EU constitution allows for a single foreign and security policy represented
by an EU Foreign Minister. However, because of the difficulty in achieving a common voice, decisions on foreign policy will have to be unanimous. This means that when members disagree, as they did over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and will surely do so over any controversial issue in the future, foreign policy will effectively remain with individual national governments.
Individual governments will still have control over their financial decisions and their military.
The EU plans a new rapid-reaction military force, which could see military duty in places such as Macedonia where several member countries now have troops under the EU flag. However, the neutrality of several countries (e.g. Ireland) will affect the creation of a European Army. There are areas in which the EU constitution would significantly expand the EU’s powers, especially in the area of criminal law. The EU already has a dominant role in areas such as trade, monetary policy and farming. Over the next 10 years the EU will face difficult decisions, major changes and tough challenges.
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Fig. 8 EU member states’ stance on the constitution
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