EU: The Government's representative at the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Ray MacSharry, has proposed that the European Commission President should be chosen by national parliaments. Mr MacSharry was speaking in a personal capacity but his remarks are understood to reflect Government thinking.
"It would really bring home the whole process. Prospective candidates would come and speak to each parliament," he said.
But Ireland's two other representatives, Mr John Bruton and Mr Proinsias De Rossa, rejected Mr MacSharry's proposal. Mr Bruton, a member of the Convention's praesidium, said the Commission President should be elected directly by the citizens of Europe.
"The people would feel that, when they voted, they could in a sense change the government of Europe," he said. Mr De Rossa believes that the European Parliament should elect not only the Commission President but the other commissioners as well.
Opening the Convention's second session in Brussels yesterday, its chairman, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, said that its members should begin by listening to the people. "The citizens of Europe have the feeling that they are not being listened to and that their views are not being taken into account," he said.
Mr MacSharry told the Convention that it was easier to talk about the concerns of citizens than to identify them accurately. He said that there was a mixture of ambition and uncertainty, hope and doubt in citizens' aspirations for Europe. "It seems already clear, however, that our citizens do share certain broad aspirations and concerns. They want a Europe that is accessible, in which jargon is minimised and procedure simplified. They want an EU that is more transparent and in which the legislative process, for example, is open to the public," he said.
Mr MacSharry said that opinion within the Convention was moving towards the Government's cautious position of opposing further integration. Mr De Rossa condemned Mr MacSharry's contributions to the Convention thus far as "extremely conservative".
Referring to the poor, he continued: "They are the fodder for our wars; they are the surplus labour for our entrepreneurs. We fill our prisons and our immigrant detention centres with them. For me Europe has to be a rage against this injustice. Our democratic union must work for economic justice, for social justice, for institutional justice.
"Our Convention must seek to copperfasten our values of democracy and social solidarity in a constitution, which will guarantee the rights of every citizen and every member state, big and small," he said.
Mr Bruton did not criticise Mr MacSharry's statement but suggested his own view of the Convention's purpose is more ambitious than that of the Government.
"It is important that the Convention doesn't only tell the people of Europe what they are thinking but what it is possible to achieve," he said.
