Convention: a turtle with a dragon's head?

British minister for Europe Peter Hain hoped that the symbol of the Convention would change: “if the turtle is the symbol for the first part of the Convention’s work, I hope the hare will be its symbol soon,” Mr Hain said.

Lengthy listening phase necessary

A massive group of members of the Convention, national politicians and the press have heavily criticised the Convention for dragging its feet on general discussions and for failing to tackle essential questions linked to the institutional structure of the Union in parallel with debates on EU’s powers. Mr Giscard has resisted criticism and many calls for speeding up the tempo by skipping the general discussions. He argues that the listening phase, whereby civil society, youths groups and convention members brainstorm on broad subjects was necessary for setting the basis for solid work for drafting the future EU constitutional Treaty.

With his new emblem, the dragon-headed turtle, Mr Giscard sends his critics the message that the Convention should not be underestimated, and he strongly favours a successful result rather than a quick but fragile progress. He also made it clear to the EU heads of state, at the Seville summit last June, that he does not want to sacrifice the content of the future Treaty the Convention will draft for the sake of respecting a deadline.

The EU leaders urged the Convention to deliver its result on time. But Mr Giscard, who compares himself with Benjamin Franklin and dreams of entering the European history as the father of the European constitution, would not run the risk of presenting a too weak or an unacceptable strong text which would be “martyrised” by the EU states during the intergovernmental conference in 2004.