EU Constitution Reform Treaty examined

The European Union Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) opened on 23 July 2007 and was initiated following a report originally produced by the German Presidency entitled 'Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe: Including the Protocols and Annexes, and Final Act with Declarations, Rome, 29 October 2004' (Cm. 6429).

This led to a Draft IGC Mandate setting out a detailed prescription on issues raised by the above report, circulated by the Presidency of the European Council. The Report itself recommended a 'Reform Treaty' that would amend existing treaties and so required an intergovernmental conference.

In this Report, ‘European Union Intergovernmental Conference’ (HC 1014), the European Scrutiny Committee has set out a number of conclusions.

These include:

• The Committee questioned the aims of the European Council in engaging with EU citizens on the EU Constitution whilst setting out changes to the constitution in an essentially secretive manner.
• The substance of the Reform Treaty is substantially equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty itself.
• The Committee is concerned about the UK's position under the Charter.
• The UK opt-outs that were previously arranged under the Constitutional Treaty will still be retained under the Reform Treaty.
• The proposals in the Reform Treaty raise a serious difficulty of a constitutional order, appearing to impose a legal duty on national parliaments to the European Union itself. The Committee calls such a legal duty on Parliament objectionable and states that as a matter of principle it should be resisted.

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