Why Does Europe need a "Reform Treaty"?
In order for the EU to successfully meet the challenges of the 21 century with 27 Member States, and possible further accessions in the future, a revision of the existing treaties is necessary. The EU treaties were last revised in 2000 with the Treaty of Nice.
The citizens expect an active and transparent EU that delivers advantages and protects them from dangers. In order for it to achieve this it has to be lean and fit, needs to have a modern administration, democratic control and to be flexible enough for reacting to current developments.
A reform treaty does not change everything in the EU. It revises the existing EU treaties, namely the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, which will be renamed as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The Path to the Reform Treaty 2007
In December 2001 the heads of government of the EU Member States
convened a European Convention under the leadership of Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, with the task of working out a broad reform. Government
representatives of the Member States and of the candidate countries, as
well as representatives of the European Parliament, European Commission
and national parliaments took part in the Convention. The Convention
drafted a Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe from 28
February 2002 to 20 July 2003.
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was meant to replace
the EC and the EU Treaties and give the European Union a uniform
structure and legal personality. In Austria, the ratification of the
Constitutional Treaty took place in mid-May 2005 by an Act of
Parliament (181:1 votes in the National Council and 59:3 votes in the
Federal Council). However, after the rejection of the Treaty in
referendums held in France (end of May 2005) and the Netherlands
(beginning of June 2005) the EU-wide ratification process of the Treaty
was not brought to an end.
In a period of reflexion the EU searched for a way out of
the difficult situation after the negative referendums. Austria, which
held the Council Presidency in the first half of 2006, successfully
strived towards giving a new impetus to the stagnating reform process.
In the Berlin Declaration, that was signed on 25 March 2007 at an
informal summit of the 27 heads of state and government on the occasion
of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome, the
heads of state and government expressed their will to give the EU a new
legal foundation by the time of the elections to the European
Parliament in 2009.
In order to achieve this, the European Council decided at its summit on
21 and 22 June 2007 on a precise mandate for negotiations on a Reform
Treaty.
On 23 July the Intergovernmental Conference took up its work of
converting the mandate into a definitive treaty draft. The negotiations
on this were successfully completed at the EU Summit at Lisbon on 18
and 19 October. On 13 December 2007 the heads of state and/or
government and the foreign ministers of the 27 EU Member States signed
the Reform Treaty, which will be named Treaty of Lisbon after the city
where this ceremony took place.
After the political agreement having been reached, the treaty will now
have to be ratified by each individual Member State and the European
Parliament, in order to become effective.
Link to the final text of the Treaty of Lisbon as published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 17 December 2007:
Treaty
of Lisbon amending the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty
establishing the European Community, signed at Lisbon, 13 December 2007
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