That's great and we're grateful. Yes, really we are. We are like so totally into consolidated versions of the Treaty.
This version is accompanied by a short editorial note that it incorporates amendments made by the Treaty of Athens signed on April 16th 2003 and includes all the protocols annexed to those Treaties as amended by the 2003 Act of Accession. That's cool.
But what is this Treaty of Athens ? Regular readers of this blog are kind of familiar with the Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and a few other Treaties, but Athens ? A bit of scratching around helped by the clue that the same note refers to the 2003 Act of Accession and some "googling" (by the way, you may want to add a general functional search system such as this blog has - it's free and easy to incorporate) reveals that the Treaty of Athens is none other than this treaty paving the way for the accession to the EU of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia and to which the Act of Accession of those countries is annexed. In other words, it deals with the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004.
So thanks a bunch.
In case you hadn't noticed, two more countries have joined the EU: Bulgaria and Romania. They are over there, on the right of the map of Europe (the east to the rest of us) by the Black Sea. They joined on January 1st, 2007 and they too have their own Treaty preparing for their accession (aka Treaty of Luxembourg, signed on April 25th, 2005) to which an act of accession is annexed. And that Act of Accession changes bits and pieces of the EC Treaty, like Article 205 EC on the weighting of votes in the Council.
Honestly, what were you guys thinking, publishing a new version of the Treaties three days before it became out of date ?
Nice one, well spotted!
Posted by: Bondwoman | January 06, 2007 at 08:20 AM