|
Glossary of shared terminology (E to F)
| At the Laeken summit in December 2001, the Heads of State and Government agreed on convening the “Convention on the Future of Europe” as a forum preparing the 2004 IGC (European Council 2001 - External link). The adopted Laeken declaration set out the institutional provisions and the mandate of the Convention. It was composed of four main components: representatives of the national parliaments, the EP, representatives of the member states, and the European Commission. The Convention comprised 105 members plus their alternates plus the three presidents. A Praesidium was meant to serve as a steering group. It was chaired by the president Giscard d’Estaing and his two vice presidents Amato and Dehaene and represented, albeit very unbalanced, each of the four components. The Convention secretariat supported its work. The agenda took the form of a questionnaire that was subdivided into four themes: the division and definition of competences between the Community and its Member States; the simplification of the Union’s instruments; democracy, transparency and efficiency in the EU; questions regarding a constitution for the Union. The result of the Convention should be either a catalogue of different opinions, among which the IGC could pick some solutions, or a single proposal. The Convention’s work was sequenced in three consecutive stages: the listening stage (Phase d’Écoute), the study stage (Phase d’Étude), the proposal stage (Phase de Réflexion). On 18 July 2003, the Convention’s chairman presented a single text to the European Council – the “Draft treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe“ [External link].
|
| In the social sciences, specifically sociology and sociocultural anthropology, functionalism is a sociological philosophy that originally attempted to explain social institutions as collective means to fill individual biological needs. Later it came to focus on the ways social institutions fill social needs, especially social solidarity. Functionalism is associated with Emile Durkheim and more recently with Talcott Parsons.
|
|
 |
