Getting to a European Constitution: From Fischer to the IGC

Abstract

On the 18^th of June, 2004, Mr. Bertie Ahearn, the Irish Prime Minister, as Chair of the European Council, announced the successful conclusion of the negotiations on a Treaty to establish a Constitution for Europe. This was a historic moment for the Union as it marked the successful conclusion of the fifth episode of treaty negotiations since the mid-1980s. Moreover, its achievement went beyond previous efforts at treaty reform for two reasons. First, the IGC was proceeded by a Convention, an institutional form that altered the negotiating and bargaining process by widening access to the deliberations on treaty reform and going beyond the confines of national governments. Second, the member states agreed a Constitution for Europe, a document that went beyond the existing constitutional architecture in the form of treaties. The origins of the Constitution may be traced right back to the Schuman Declaration in 1950, the Rome Treaties of 1957, the seminal judgements of the European Court of Justice in 1963/64, and the other periodic episodes of treaty reform in the Union. As an ideal and idea, it owes something to the lifelong conviction of Altiero Spinelli, a committee federalist, that the Monnet method of incremental integration had to be complemented at some stage by political integration. Spinelli, an MEP in the first directly elected European Parliament, established the ‘Crocodile Club’ of like-minded MEPs to encourage the parliament to prepare a constitution for the European Union. On February 14^th, 1984, a significant majority of MEPs, 237 to 31 with 43 abstentions adopted a draft treaty. Altiero Spinelli, visited all of the member state capitals in his efforts to get national governments animated on the constitution.