BENEDICTA MARZINOTTO

Un nuovo modo di costruire l'Europa? Attori, preferenze, e risorse nella Convenzione Europea

N. 203

Summary - This paper analyses in detail the decision-making process within the European Convention. It focuses on actors, their preferences and resources, on one hand, and outcomes, on the other hand, in the attempt to test whose preferences have eventually prevailed and with what alternative instruments of power have these preferences been pursued (e.g. veto, agenda-setting, persuasion). It is noted that the Convention method is appropriate when at stake are issues whose distributional consequences are either complex, and hence ambiguous, or unimportant; in the Convention, everyone fiinally agreed to the constitutionalization of important community matters indeed because preferences over this issue were not necessarily interest-based. Instead, on other themes such as the choice over the most appropriate model of European integration, the predominance of interest-based preferences has rendered the Community method inefficient, or at least not different from any other type of negotiation.