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Eu president Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)    http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=346565 http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=346565 'Skeleton' EU constitution calls for strong president By Stephen Castle in Brussels 28 October 2002 A "skeleton" constitution for Europe will raise the prospect of a powerful new EU president, a congress of national and European parliamentarians and an "exit clause" for nations that want to quit. The draft document, released today, will be the first concrete sign of the thinking of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who is chairing a convention of 105 politicians investigating the future of Europe. The document will identify the central issues for a revamped EU and devise a structure for a new treaty. However, many of the most sensitive points will be left unresolved. Mr Giscard's blueprint will suggest that the EU has one unified treaty and gain a "single legal personality" – allowing the EU to sign treaties and sit on international bodies such as the United Nations. The current complex structure that divides policy areas into separate "pillars" will be axed. The document will accommodate the possibility of a new president of the European Council, opening the way for Tony Blair's preference, a powerful leader drawn from the ranks for former prime ministers or presidents. The selected person might be approved by a new congress that would meet periodically to take big decisions. But it will have no detailed proposal for a new EU president, which is contentious because smaller member states believe it will weaken the power of the European Commission. It will also have provision for an "exit clause", allowing nations that want to leave the EU to do so. At present, no such mechanism exists, although the EC treaty was amended in 1984 to exclude Greenland, which had won home rule from Denmark. Again, little detail will be settled and one crucial issue may be left unresolved: whether nations which fail to ratify treaties would, in effect, exclude themselves. Most of the specifics have been left vague because the convention has still to reach consensus on most of its work. The document will be designed, in part, to provoke a debate and help discover a consensus. Mr Giscard's convention is due to finish its work next summer but its conclusions must be agreed by the heads of all EU governments. It may also open the way for the EU to be renamed – Mr Giscard has already voiced a preference for "United Europe", and a slogan to stress Europe's main objectives, such as "justice, solidarity and liberty". Mr Giscard's document follows the Brussels EU summit last week, which brought strong signs of a Franco- German rapprochement. Paris and Berlin now plan to produce a joint paper on the future of Europe, probably in time for the 40th anniversary of the 1963 treaty that bound the two nations.

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