Europe 2004 - Le grand debat - setting the agenda and outlining the options

Abstract

The Future of Europe was the theme of a conference organized in Brussels between the 15th and 16th of October 2001 by the European Commission and the European University Council under the umbrella of the Jean Monnet Project. Some two hundred Jean Monnet Professors and other delegates participated. The Conference was intended as a free-wheeling debate on the future of Europe, and as the title suggests the idea was to identify some of the options. It came just as the debate was being launched in the Member States and the candidate countries: in Malta the national event was set to take place on the 17th and 18th of the month. The background is the JGC due to be held in 2004 to lead, it is thought, to reform of the Treaties post-Nice. The largest issue is whether the European Union should be unequivocally vested with some express legal personality, the nature of which is as yet undetermined, and whether a Constitution should be drafted for the 'Union'.