The Commission has asked for an enlarged role and more power,Denis Staunton reports from Brussels
The European Commission has called for sweeping new powers in an enlarged EU, including the leading role in Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy.
In its first submission to the Convention on the Future of Europe, the Commission has also proposed a common asylum and immigration policy, a single, European legal framework and a European border guard.
It also wants an enhanced role in co-ordinating economic policy within the euro zone and greater influence over national budgets.
Introducing the submission to the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday, the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said that Europe's citizens want the EU to take on more responsibilities.
"Building a Europe-wide democracy does not mean building a super-state.
"It means building a society in which we assert our Europeanness by exercising the rights and duties of European citizenship.
"A society capable of finding new solutions to problems we all share and responding to the concerns that are common to our citizens," he said.
The Commission's proposals are likely to meet strong resistance from member-states, most of which are reluctant to cede more power to Brussels.
The proposals to merge the roles of the EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, and the External Affairs Commissioner, Mr Chris Patten, within the Commission will be especially controversial.
Under the proposal, the Commission would play the leading role, not only in co-ordinating foreign policy but in military operations conducted by the new European Rapid Reaction Force.
"The High Representative/ Commissioner for External Relations should also be given a leading role in terms of day-to-day crisis management. In this context, it has to be said that the formula in the Treaty of Nice whereby it is up to the Political and Security Committee, which will soon have some 30 members, to ensure political control and strategic direction of crisis-management operations under the responsibility of the Council, remains unsatisfactory," the submission states.
The document stresses that the new arrangements should not prejudice "the specific position of some member-states when it comes to actions with defence implications".
However, it makes clear that the EU's four neutral member-states should not have a veto on military or foreign policy action.
"The common interest has to be defined in a dynamic manner when it comes to foreign, security and defence policy.
"This means not scaling down to accommodate the reticence of some, but seeking credibility and effectiveness through a policy which sets out to safeguard, outside the union's own borders, certain values which are essential to our democracies.
"Unanimity in foreign policy for the enlarged union is no more relevant than it is in trade," the document states.
Mr Prodi told the European Parliament that the Convention offered Europe an opportunity to lay the foundations for a supranational democracy and to make Europe a fully-fledged mature, political entity.
"The time has come to launch a grand political project that our fellow citizens can identify with. A project they can get to grips with. A project that can offer a solid, practical response to the doubts, concerns and fears besetting Europe," he said.