Convention President, Valérie Giscard d’Estaing, met today with the European Council to report back on work on the Convention on the future of Europe. As a member of the Civil Society Contact Group, Friends of the Earth Europe calls upon President d’Estaing to introduce sustainable development as an ‘overarching objective’ in the draft Constitution for the European Union (1).

The objectives in the draft presented to the Summit are based on art. 2 of the existing Treaty of the European Community, but leaves out four important elements - sustainable development, gender equity, improvement of quality of life and improvement of working conditions – and furthermore, watered down the objective of "improvement of the quality of the environment".

Martin Rocholl, director of Friends of the Earth Europe says: ‘As the European Union opens its membership to ten new countries, these are extremely worrying signs. We already have so far to go to achieve a sustainable Europe in a global context. If we step back from even the timid achievements we have yet made, then our Union will have sacrificed its social and environmental vision on the altar of economic competitiveness.’

Rocholl says further: ‘the Convention process cannot be limited to structural and decision-making aspects: European citizens expect our decision-makers to use this opportunity to shape the European Union of tomorrow into a sustainable model of society, where sectoral policies are coherent and our wealth does not grow at the expense of the poorest. Therefore we need to make sustainable development, inside the EU and globally, central to the Constitution’s definition of the purpose of the Union.’

For further information in Copenhagen contact:

Duncan McLaren, Policy Director, FOE England +44-7941 920 469
Frederic Thoma, FOE Europe +32 4 8640 1895
Magda Stoczkiewicz, FOE Europe and CEE Bankwatch +31 65 241 0323

Notes:

(1) http://www.eeb.org/activities/Future_europe/call_for_immediate_action.htm
Giscard d’Estaing published a ‘preliminary draft’ for such a Constitution and has promised to present a further draft later this month.

 

Friends of the Earth is the largest grassroots environmental network in the world 
campaigning to protect the environment and to create sustainable societies.
Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) unites more than 30 national member groups with thousands of local groups.