Regions and the convention on the future of Europe: A dialogue with the deaf?

The Convention on the Future of Europe was created to draw up a constitution for an enlarged European Union. The Convention contained representatives of member states, acceding states, national parliaments and European Union institutions, as well as the Committee of the Regions. Regional representatives within the Convention and external organizations such as the Conference of Regional Legislative Assemblies in Europe (CALRE) sought to lobby the Convention in pursuit of regional interests which had been part of the regional agenda since Maastricht. This paper examines the various efforts by the regional lobby to influence the Convention and, in particular, the emergence of the 'constitutional' regions as a more coherent representative of Europe's third level of government. It argues that regional interests were largely marginalized within the Convention but that regional demands might be reinserted into a new European constitution given regional lobbying of national governments in advance of the 2004 intergovernmental conference in addition to intergovernmental bargaining and negotiations at the intergovernmental conference (IGC) itself.