Johannes Jarlebring

Taking stock of the European Convention:  What added value does the Convention bring to the process of treaty revision?

Introduction

According to Article 48 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU), the founding treaties of the Union can only be amended through a three-step procedure. First, the Council calls an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), after having consulted the European Parliament (EP) and the Commission. Second, within the framework of the IGC, representatives of the governments of the Member States negotiate and sign the amendments to the treaties by common accord. Third, the agreement is submitted to national ratification procedures. When all three steps are concluded, each Member State having ratified the amendments to the treaty, the changes enter into force.

However, recent developments have shown that the legal text of Article 48 does not fully reflect the political reality of treaty revision. Since the end of February 2002, a so-called European Convention, composed of 105 full members, representing the EP, national parliaments, the Commission and national governments, has been discussing how the basic treaties should be reformed. The result of the discussions, a draft constitutional treaty intended to replace the current treaties, was formally submitted in June at the Tessaloniki European Council by Convention President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. The draft treaty will constitute the starting-point for an IGC, beginning this autumn and finishing next spring, before the next elections to the EP.

The potential importance of these developments can hardly be overestimated. By letting a body composed of a majority of parliamentarians elaborate a draft treaty, governments have already, for all intents and purposes, come to share their traditional prerogative to draft international treaties with European and national legislatives. Moreover, many actors now work actively for an institutionalisation of the Convention method by integrating...