The Reform Treaty : Constitution Abandoned

The European Council has reached an agreement on what to do next in the process of revising the EU and EC Treaties. The agreement was reached in the early hours of June 23rd, 2007.

You can find the Presidency Conclusions here.

The main part on the amendment to the Treaties is to be found in Annex I to the Conclusions.

The idea of a "Constitution" is abandoned. Instead there will be a "Reform Treaty". An Intergovernmental Conference will be convened in July 2007 to draft it and it is hoped to finalize it by the end of 2007 with a view to ratifications in 2009.

More details later....

Comments

[Guillaume]

Nicolas Sarkozy secured the removal of "undistorted competition" from the objectives of the treaty. I would be curious to see what legal arguments will this give rise to, in view of the Court's teleological interpretation of Treaty provisions...

[Bondwoman]

Have you any idea where one can get the Council Legal Service document 580/07 referred to in the discussion on supremacy in the Annex?

[turner]

Yes, the reform treaty may be not be called a Constitution, but some of the defeated document's provisions, and exact wordings, are taken into the discussion document for the intergovernmental conference (IGC)on the "reform treaty." For example:
a) "New" "reform treaty" article 9e is substantially Constitution I-27 and
b)"new" articles 10a and 10b from Constitution III-193 and III-194 respectively. In 10B.1, the word "traites" replaces "Constitution" in III.194--are these then seen as metonymies?
On occasion, when Maastricht is in fact "modified," this is done to give the precise wording of the Constitution document. Examples of this are:
a)Maastricht article 14, modified by IGC provision 31 to give Constitution III-198;
b) Maastricht article 21, modified by "reform treaty" proposal 39 to read as Constitution III.205, and
c) Maastricht article 19, modified by proposal 37b to give Constitution III-206.1.

Mere technicalities, perhaps, but worth recording (and mentioning in the intergovernmental discussion document).