ABSTRACT
Agenda setting The Convention’s agenda was outlined by the Laeken Council in a document whose very title – Europe at the Crossroads – implied a sense of urgency, the need ‘to reverse out of this (present) dead end’ to meet contemporary global challenges by reforming EU governance.1 Reform was seen as essential for responding to public disquiet, and not least to prepare for impending enlargement, though the Convention was not tied to a specific agenda but had ‘a relatively open mandate’.2 Laeken identified some classic constitutional themes that were bound to figure in the Convention’s work. Every constitutional polity requires a definitive statement of the values and guiding principles that define its mission and purpose. This is bound to be problematic in a polity that lacks identity and consists of pre-existing states, each with its own history and demos. There was certainly no Laeken mandate for resolving the EU’s normative ambiguities, its ‘in-between’ status, those tensions inherent in a transnational polity that must balance the supranational aspirations of some of its stakeholders with the abiding national preferences of its member states. There was awareness nevertheless amongst conventionnels about the need to more clearly demarcate the boundaries between the national and EU domains.3
