Dr. Stephen Coutts:

I will take the questions in the order that they were asked. I am a bit ambiguous, and like Professor Laffan, as an analyst and academic, I am always wary of drawing very firm conclusions. That may also have something to do with my personality. To broadly characterise my position, and I think this view is shared by the other witnesses, treaty change for the sake of treaty change is not a good idea and it is a high-risk strategy but, at the same time, I would not preclude it necessarily. In terms of the existing treaties, I am afraid I cannot go into a huge amount of detail because on the competences of the Union, in order to determine exactly what the Union can do, it is not enough to say that the Union has competences in any one policy area, be it fiscal, environment or consumer. One has to look at the very specific policy area and specific legal bases that are provided in the treaties to see exactly what the Union can do. That would require detailed study, which we have not done in particular policy areas. My own narrower area is citizens' rights, and I can certainly speak to that.

Broadly speaking, environment policy is a shared competence, as is consumer policy, but fiscal matters are quite restricted and the competences are very frequently characterised by the unanimity rule. Health is not even characterised as a shared competence but as a co-operative competence on which the Union simply co-ordinates the member states. As I said, I cannot speak exactly to the Union's competence in those specific areas at the moment and whether they are being utilised. Members would have to ask an expert more specifically, for example, somebody working in environmental law.

There seems to be an assumption that in order to achieve some sort of a policy outcome that the Union itself has to be adopting the legislation. The Union can also play a really important role in co-ordinating member states' competence, so one can use both the member state and the Union competence in any particular area to achieve a desired result. That is also a possibility that is worth emphasising.

There are also other options that would be short of treaty change which might be able to effect some increase in the efficiency of the Union, for example, greater use of the enhanced co-operation mechanism. There are also the passerelle clauses which allow the Union to shift from unanimity to qualified majority voting in certain areas. There is a general passerelle clause and there are some specific ones in particular areas, for example, in environment and in social matters. The use of those clauses requires unanimity initially, as there must be a unanimous decision in order to make that change in the decision-making process, so that is a possibility that can be used. For particular areas which are frustrated by the operation of unanimity, for example, fiscal matters, the decision-making process could be changed, but that would involve overcoming the hurdle that unanimity is required in the first place to do that.

On the question of the standing citizens' assembly, this was just a remark that I made and I mentioned it somewhere without having personally thought it through in any great detail. What I would say is that much more careful consideration would have to be given to something like this. Some of the issues that would have to be considered would be the formation of any such assembly; its representative nature; how the agenda would be controlled; that it is properly resourced, which is very important in any of these arrangements; and what the outcome would be - whether it would be legislative proposals or something else. It would also have to be placed within the institutional structure of the Union and care would have to be taken about how it would fit within the broader institutional structure of the Union because the institutions are balanced in a very careful and delicate way. Careful consideration needs to be given when introducing new elements into it. I am thinking in particular about the operation of the European citizens' initiative, ECI, and how that fits within the broader law-making process of the Union.