The European Parliament today criticised the Nice Treatyas a "timid" and "insufficient" answer to problems likely to arise from EU enlargement and said it should be followed up by a "convention" of parliamentarians from member-states.
The parliament is not authorised to either accept or reject the treaty agreed last December but only to give an opinion. It must be accepted by all member-states but Ireland is only country which requires a referendum.
The opinion issued today acknowledged the treaty had been of "strategic importance . . . lifting the last formal obstacle to enlargement" of the EU.
But it expressed "strong regret that the treaty . . . gave only a timid, and in some cases an insufficient answer" to problems posed in reshaping EU institutions originally formed for five member-states to accommodate as many as 28 in the coming decade.
The parliament called for "a transparent, radically different process" to be applied in the next treaty revisions which are to be carried out by 2004 - a process entailing the establishment of a "convention" of member-states' legislators beginning early next year.
Such a convention would also include members of the European Parliament, member-states' governments and the European Commission, as well as representatives of EU candidate countries as "observers," it said.
The resolution, passed by a vote of 338 to 98 with 59 abstentions, called on national parliaments to "express their solid commitment" to the convention.
AFP