The European Convention: Bargaining in the shadow of rhetoric

presented as a turning point in the history of European integration. This article argues that, although its composition was broader, its process more transparent and its rules more flexible than classic intergovernmental conferences, the Convention was not Europe’s Philadelphia. Since it took place under the shadow of the IGC and under a leadership especially sensitive to the positions of big member states, the Convention reproduced, by extension, the logic of intergovernmental bargains. Nevertheless, some of the Convention’s outcome – the most formal aspects of its draft treaty with less predictable distributional consequences – can be explained by the ‘social norm ’ of constitutional deliberation conveyed by its president and supported by a majority of its members. A constitutional Convention does not come every day in the history of a polity. When in December 2001 at Laeken in Belgium, the heads of state and government of the European Union (EU) agreed on the creation of