European Parliament urges rewrite of EU treaties

The European Parliament on Wednesday known for the EU to rewrite its underpinning treaties, as asked with the aid of a set of European citizens who took part in a prime public session.

A majority of MEPs, sitting within the parliament’s fundamental chamber inside the French metropolis of Strasbourg, voted in favour of overhauling components of the treaties to enhance the bloc’s democratic appeal.

Their resolution, however, was only advisory — any changes would have to be agreed upon unanimously by the EU’s 27 member states, after approval by parliaments, courts and, in some cases, national referendums.

Guy Verhofstadt, an MEP and former Belgian prime minister who chaired the citizen Conference on the Future of Europe, tweeted that the vote was an “ambitious implementation” of what had been urged.

“Health, energy, defence, democracy… Another EU is possible!” he said.

The two-year consultation just ended, involved 800 EU citizens selected randomly but balanced for gender, age, education and socioeconomic levels looking at ways the EU works and what it could do better.

It came up with 325 proposals which would require an overhaul of how the EU currently takes policy stances and decisions.

Among them would be getting rid of the need for unanimous agreement by all 27 EU countries in sensitive areas such as taxes, social security, foreign policy and acceptance of new members.

Another would be to empower the European Parliament to put forward legislative proposals itself, instead of weighing initiatives made by the European Commission or, less commonly, the European Council, which represents member states.

The citizens’ conference also said it wants to see the EU take more responsibility in areas usually jealously guarded by member nations, such as defence and health.

The proposals were to be handed over to French President Emmanuel Macron next Monday when the EU celebrates Europe Day marking its founding. France currently holds the EU presidency.

Wednesday’s parliament vote came a day after Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi addressed MEPs to say the EU needs to become “stronger” through “pragmatic federalism”.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, a country that hopes one day to join the EU, had shown the bloc’s institutions to be inadequate in their response, he said.

Draghi called for the European Union to adopt more streamlined decision-making, notably by doing away with the unanimity rule, and for it to expand eastwards, taking in Ukraine and Balkan nations.

Attempts have been made before to reform the EU, but not always successfully.

In 1992, Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty, a founding text for the modern European Union, only to approve it a year later after their government negotiated opt-outs in sensitive policy areas.

More recently, in 2005, voters in France and the Netherlands said no to a treaty that would have brought in a formal EU constitution.