European Commission President Mr Romano Prodi is ready for a public debate on Europe's leadership with the head of the forum drawing up an EU constitution, his spokesman said today.
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Mr Valery Giscard D'Estaing, who chairs the Convention on the Future of Europe, has suggested he and Prodi should thrash out in public the issue of whether the European Council, the EU's supreme body, should have a long-term president.
"The president (Prodi) is always willing to discuss matters relating to the Convention on the Future of Europe with Giscard d'Estaing, publicly or not publicly, whenever and wherever," his spokesman said.
"If this debate happens, we are ready to take it on and we can promise there will be ice-cream and fireworks for everybody," he added.
The issue of whether to scrap the current six-monthly rotation of the Council presidency among member states and to replace it with a long-term figure is a controversial one in the Convention, whose draft constitution must be ready by June 20th.
Mr Giscard belongs to the pro-reform camp, also comprising the bigger European Union member states such as France and Britain, which say the rotating presidency is inefficient and will become unworkable after the EU takes in 10 new members next year.
But Mr Prodi, backed by most of the smaller member states, fears such a reform would undermine the Commission, the EU's Brussels-based executive. They also suspect the new president would inevitably be under the thumb of the bigger countries.