Introduction
Duff's Plan B
His proposal is based on the existing text and foresees to keep the Preamble, as well as Parts I and II. With respect to Part III he intends to add and put more emphasis on the elements of:
- Economic governance and the Lisbon agenda
- The European social model with a possibility to sign up to a Protocol on a Social Union
- Tackling climate change
- Enlargement policy, with the innovation of adding a new category of associate membership
- The financial system
He proposes a constitutional co-decision with the new text being jointly approved by the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and the European Parliament. He opposed the idea of ratifying these in a Mini Treaty, as proposed by Sarkozy, saying to separate out Part III is legally impossible and politically improbable.''
Sarkozy's mini-Treaty
The mini-Treaty, would take up "about two-thirds" of novelties from the Constitution that was "not critical" issues during the failed referenda in France and the Netherlands.
The main elements of the Mini Treaty include:
- Election of the Commission president by the European Parliament
- creation of a European minister of foreign affairs
- replacing unanimity by a "super qualified majority"
- reinforced cooperation
- citizens' initiatives
Bonde proposals
The European Union (EU) shall not have a constitution. Instead, Europe should be organized on an interparliamentary basis by means of a Treaty on European Cooperation. This will create a Europe of Democracies (ED) in place of the existing EU. Membership of the ED shall be open to any democratic European state which is a signatory of, and respects fully, the European Convention on Human Rights. The ED shall not have its own army.
Laws shall be valid only if they have been passed by national parliaments. A national parliament shall have a veto on an issue it deems important and should elect its own member of the Commission. The present 30 different ways of making decisions in the EU shall be reduced to two: laws and recommendations.
The Greens - Caroline Lucas' opinion
Rejecting the Constitution is first step to a sustainable alternative: a sustainable Europe. A sustainable Europe refers to the foster of co-operation on issues of common interest and establishing international institutions for their own sake.
The European Union should be made up of overlapping, co-operative, democratic, decentralized groupings of nations and regions. Following the principle of subsidiarity, many issues currently decided at the EU level should be dealt with a more appropriate level for effective action, which might be local, national or global.
Our aim is to reconstitute the EU as a democratically accountable European Confederation of Regions. Its organization would follow the Green principle of subsidiarity, that decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level, and not impose the "harmonization" of the current EU.
