Introduction
1. The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe
(referred to in this Report as the Constitutional Treaty or the
Treaty) was drafted in 2003 by a Convention consisting of Members
of the European Parliament and representatives of the Commission
and the governments and national parliaments of all the EU's Member
States. The Convention's text[1]
was then considered by an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC),
consisting of the EU's heads of State or Government, which adopted
the Treaty.[2] The Treaty
was signed in Rome on 29 October 2004, and now requires ratification
by all 25 Member States to come into force. Three Member States
have already ratified the Treaty (Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia),
and one has held a referendum in which ratification was approved
(Spain). In the UK the European Union Bill currently before the
Commons provides that ratification by the UK can take place only
if the people have agreed in a referendum to approve the Treaty;
the referendum is likely to take place in 2006.
2. The process leading to the adoption of the Constitutional
Treaty has involved far more discussion than any previous European
treaty. We have ourselves produced three reports at various stages,
on Democracy and accountability in the EU and the role of national
parliaments in June 2002,[3]
on The Convention on the Future of Europe and the role of national
Parliaments in June 2003[4]
and on The Convention's proposals on criminal justice in
July 2003.[5] The House
of Lords Select Committee on the European Union has also reported
extensively on the various texts.[6]
3. Following adoption of the Treaty by the IGC, we
decided that there would be little point in us producing a commentary
on the Treaty as a whole, but that we could make a contribution
to the debate by examining specific matters covered by or connected
with the Treaty. We deal with the following subjects in this
Report:
- the practical consequences
of the new references (in Articles I-2 and I-3) to the Union's
values and objectives;
- the effect of the Article giving EU law primacy
over national law;
- how public meetings of the Council of Ministers
when legislating would work in practice;
- how the new Council Presidency and the new Foreign
Minister would work, and the relationship between the European
Council Presidency and the Presidency of the individual Council
formations;
- whether the Treaty would make 'enhanced cooperation'
more likely;
- the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the effect
of its 'horizontal clauses';
- the extent to which the UK Government held its
'red lines';
- the effectiveness of the 'emergency brakes' in
criminal justice and other matters;
- the Treaty's criminal justice provisions (following
up our earlier Report); and
- what the consequences would be if the Treaty
is not ratified.
4. We emphasise that the subjects we chose do not
form a cross-section of the Treaty's provisions. We deliberately
chose areas where the Treaty or its expected impact is less clear
and therefore where there was likely to be something new to say.
5. We use here the Article numbers in the final version
of the Treaty (printed in Cm 6429), and have corrected references
to Article numbers given in oral and written evidence to the new
numbers.[7] We also sometimes
refer to what 'will' happen under the Treaty without indicating
every time that this depends on the Treaty being ratified.
6. We are grateful to all those who provided oral
or written evidence for the care they took to provide us with
clear evidence on what are often highly complex matters.
1 The draft Constitutional Treaty for the European
Union, Cm 5897 (August 2003). Back
2
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, Cm 6429
(December 2004). Back
3
HC 152-xxxiii (2001-02). Back
4
HC 63-xxiv (2002-03). Back
5
HC 63-xxvi (2002-03). Back
6
See especially 41st Report (2002-03), The future of Europe
- the Convention's draft Constitutional Treaty, HL Paper 169;
6th Report (2003-04), The future role of the European Court
of Justice, HL Paper 47. Back
7
The Article numbers given in the earlier oral and written evidence
relate to Provisional Text of the Constitutional Treaty for
the European Union, Cm 6289 (July 2004). Back
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