EU: Statewatch analysis of the EU's draft Reform Treaty
01 August 2007
On 23 July, the text of the EU's draft Reform Treaty was released in French only. The English-language texts were released on 30-31 July, and to date (9 August) the draft Treaty is still not available in any other of the EU's 20-odd languages.
The draft Reform Treaty would repeal or amend every single Article of the 62 Articles of the current Treaty on European Union (TEU) and would make 296 amendments to the 318 Articles of the current Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC). It would also amend or repeal most of the current 36 Protocols to the current Treaties as well as many Articles of the separate Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (the Euratom Treaty). Finally, it would add a number of new Protocols and Declarations to the Treaties.
The EU summit meeting (European Council) decided in June that these far-reaching amendments should be agreed by the end of 2007 and that the Reform Treaty should be ratified by June 2009 at the latest. In fact, the intention of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council is to agree on the text of the Treaty by mid-October. Taking account of the summer break this leaves very little time for civil society, national parliaments and the European Parliament to examine the draft text before it is agreed - and then once it is agreed, the Treaty will be presented to parliaments on a "take it or leave it" basis.
Moreover, the text of the Reform Treaty is completely unintelligible unless it is read alongside the existing Treaties. Furthermore, the full impact of many of the amendments to the Treaties set out in the draft Reform Treaty needs further explanation. Finally, there has been much public discussion of whether or not the draft Reform Treaty is essentially identical to the EU's Constitutional Treaty of 2004.
In order to further public understanding of and debate upon the draft Reform Treaty, the following Statewatch analyses make the text of the draft Treaty comprehensible, by setting out the entire texts of the existing TEU and TEC and showing precisely how those texts would be amended by the draft Treaty. There are explanatory notes on the impact of each substantive amendment to the Treaties, and each analysis includes general comments, giving an overview of the changes and pointing out exactly which provisions of the draft Reform Treaty were taken from the Constitutional Treaty, and which provisions are different from the Constitutional Treaty.
There are 3 analyses, divided into ten parts.
Analysis no 1
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focusses on the issue of Justice and Home Affairs
Analysis no. 2 is the amended text of the TEU, and is divided into 2 parts:
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the non-foreign policy part of the Treaty (basic principles and key institutional rules of the EU) and
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the foreign policy part of that Treaty
Analysis no. 3 is the amended text of the TEC, and is divided into seven parts more or less following the structure of the Treaty:
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Part One of the Treaty on general provisions
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Part Two on non-discrimination and citizenship
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half of Part Three on the internal market and competition (except for the JHA clauses, which are the subject of analysis no. 1)
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the second half of Part Three, on other internal EU policies (such as social policy, monetary union and environment policy)
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