European Constitutional Convention

from	Secretariat
to	The Convention
Subject :	Contribution presented by MM. Dini and Duff "The Convention and the timetable of the Intergovernmental Conference"

The Secretary-General of the Convention has received the contribution in Annex, presented by Mr Lamberto Dini and Mr Andrew Duff and signed by a number of members and alternate members of the Convention.

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ANNEX

Contribution by Members and Alternate Members of the Convention:

Mr Lamberto Dini, Mr Andrew Duff, Ms Lone Dybkjaer, Mr Henning Christophersen, Mr Willem van Eekelen, Lord Robert MacLennan of Rogart, Mr Agirdas Gricius, Mr Jelko Kacin, Mrs Androula Vassiliou, Mr Gintautas Sivickas, Filadelfio Basile, Hubert Haenel, Marco Follini, Antonio Tajani, Gianfranco Fini, Valdo Spini, Elena Paciotti, Olivier Duhamel, Alain Lamassoure, Pervenche Beres, Jurgen Meyer, Mr Alejandro Muñoz Alonso and Cristiana Muscardini.

The Convention and the timetable of the

Intergovernmental Conference

The Convention should rise to the historical challenge before us: to give Europe an organic Constitution. While positively assessing the progress made so far and the achievements of the Convention, which set off taking long and careful heed of civil society, we would like to emphasize that it is important that the work of the Convention be concluded in June 2003, as planned, with the submission of the draft Constitutional Treaty to the European Council shortly thereafter.

The Intergovernmental Conference (igc), with the full participation on equal footing of the ten candidate countries, should time its proceedings so as to ensure that citizens electing the European Parliament in 2004 have full knowledge of the Constitutional Treaty approved by the IGC and signed also by the Union's ten new member States.

We must be aware that failure to keep to this agenda might undermine the ratification process of the Constitutional Treaty, which should not overlap with the important financial negotiations in 2006.

Lamberto Dini Andrew Duff

March 18, 2003