ABSTRACT
As acknowledged by most commentators, the creation of a ‘Convention’ to pave the way for the next round of institutional reform in the EU is a turning-point in the history of European integration (Shaw 2003a). First, this is because, so far, institutional choices have been piecemeal and instrumental decisions, primarily governed by the will of the Member States to protect their interests-and only partly influenced by a ‘democratic ideology’ (Pollack 1997; Moravcsik 1998). By contrast, the Convention was supposed to rethink the whole ‘constitutional’ setting of the Union. Second, while former reforms were adopted through closed negotiations between diplomatic representatives of the Member States,1 the Convention involves a much broader range of actors, and is supposed to be a fully open process.
