Rome Inter-Governmental Conference

The Rome IGC opened on the 4 October 2003. The purpose of the conference is to discuss and agree the content of the draft Constitution for the European Union which emerged from the recent Convention on the Future of Europe.

Inter-Governmental Conferences (IGC) are the mechanism used by the EU to debate reform of certain aspects of the EU by bringing together representatives of governments of the Member States. Past Inter-Governmental Conferences have resulted in the Single European Act 1986, the Maastricht Treaty 1992, the treaty of Amsterdam 1997 and the Nice treaty 2001.

The Convention on the Future of Europe

The Convention on the Future of Europe took place from February 2002 to July 2003 and was unique in the history of the EU in that for the first time EU reform was discussed in a public, transparent and wide reaching debate. In all there were 105 representatives made up of government representatives from the 15 member states, governments of the ten accession countries and three candidate countries, representatives from their national parliaments (not necessarily governments), representatives from the European Parliament and the European Commission and 13 observers from other EU Committees including the Economic and Social Committee.

There were plenary sessions devoted to listening to the views of civil society, sub groups and expert think tanks established and all documents were publicly available via the Conventions website at www.european-convention.eu.int . While this allowed for a debate which was significantly more open and representative than in the past, women and non-white people were poorly represented.

It is disappointing that given the openness of the Convention this ICG will happen behind closed doors. However there have been assurances that a website will be established to give updates on developments. At the time of writing a final timetable and working methods for the IGC have not been established. However the Italian presidency is keen to see the Conference complete its work by 10 December 2003 to allow for translation of the final treaty and referenda in members states in June 2004 (it is not likely that there will be a referendum in the UK).

If you are interested in finding out more about the IGC and its deliberations keep an eye on the site of act4europe, a network of social NGOs, at www.act4europe.org