The European Council of 27 June 2024 had invited the European Commission to present by spring 2025 an EU reform plan before the new accessions containing four operational pillars:
- The rule of law
- European policies to ensure competitiveness, prosperity, global leadership and strategic autonomy
- The budget on the basis of a draft MFF to be presented by 1 July 2025
Of this comprehensive plan there is as yet no substantial trace in the communications of the European Commission, nor was the parliamentary majority that confirmed Ursula von der Leyen as President for the second time able to accompany the vote of confidence with a “coalition contract” on the priorities of the new legislature.
These four themes have constitutional meaning in the sense that their operationalisation, if translated into EU decisions, will affect the European system of government, the relations between the European institutions and between them and the member states.
These four issues were taken into consideration by the European Parliament in the report on the revision of the Lisbon Treaty, on which the Assembly voted on 22 November 2023, which was ignored by the Council, the European Council, the Commission and has not been part of the political groups’ priorities since the 2024 election campaign.
If the proposal discussed in the Convention on the Future of Europe to introduce “organic laws” that do not require Treaty changes but stronger majorities had been accepted, decisions on respect for the rule of law, on the extension of competences as envisaged in Article 352 TFEU, on the multiannual budget including public debt and own resources, and on governance could have been adopted over the unanimity hurdle.
This was not the case, and decisions that concern the essence of the EU system, i.e. those provided for in the first part of the Treaty (TEU), which was written by the Convention on the Future of Europe and are therefore constitutional in nature, almost always require unanimity and sometimes the intervention of national parliaments.
Faced with the obstacles of unanimous voting and, more generally, with the misconception that these decisions require a “cession of sovereignty” whereas they are a “sharing of sovereignty”, the European Parliament should abandon the path that was uselessly embarked upon with the 22 November 2023 report, which would inevitably lead to an intergovernmental conference, and draw inspiration from the constituent method that was born out of the Crocodile Club in 1980.
After the European elections in June 2024, the political will to reopen the way towards a European constitution has practically disappeared from the agendas of almost all parliamentary groups and is not even part of the priorities of the informal intergroup that has given itself the name “Spinelli Group”, which has chosen instead the path of Article 48 TEU.
If the political conditions are not currently in place to launch a constitution-making process, the European Parliament should claim the necessity of a “constitutional path” in order for decisions affecting the EU system and its essence to be taken on the basis of an interinstitutional agreement, on legal bases guaranteeing democratic control, on the involvement of national parliaments and finally on dialogue with citizens and civil society.
The theme of European defence as an integral part of foreign and security policy to which legal bases must be applied that recognise democratic parliamentary control, the theme of the multiannual financial framework that allows for the instrument of loans and mortgages and thus of European public debt but also of own resources such as to require an agreement between the Council and Parliament and the promotion of a structured dialogue with national parliaments, the protection of the values of the European Union and thus of the rule of law as enshrined in Art. 2 TEU, the use of Art. 352 TFEU to extend the competences of the European Union where the principle of shared sovereignty requires it, and the use of Art. 235 TFEU that gives the European Parliament a power of “pre-initiative legislative power” pending the inclusion of the power of initiative in the Treaties, the EU development of the area of freedom, security and justice that includes the issue of citizenship, non-discrimination and migration and asylum policies.
Regarding dialogue with civil society and participatory democracy, which is an essential element of the constitutional dimension, the European Parliament should strengthen its rules of procedure in order to be listening to citizens who have made use of Article 11 TEU pending a Treaty change that transfers the power to examine ECI to the Assembly.
Along the ‘constitutional path’ it will become clear to the European Parliament but also to national parliaments and local authorities that the steps forward will be inadequate also in view of the state of the enlargement negotiations, that the defence of the rule of law will clash with divisions between governments, that the fragmentation of external relations between two parts of the Treaty is highly detrimental to the international role of the European Union, that the multiannual financial framework that governments will propose will not be consistent with the objectives of convergence and competitiveness and that Art. 352 TFEU will not allow the EU’s competences to be strengthened where there is a question of its strategic autonomy such as industry and energy.
It will be necessary to prepare at that time to move from the “constitutional path” to the “constituent process” according to a democratic method and an agenda aimed at the conclusion of the tenth European legislature by opening the debate on a comprehensive reform of the European Union involving a majority of States and peoples who will share it.
Brussels, 25 June 2025