Brussels, 15/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - European Commission President Romano Prodi and Commissioner Michel Barnier received, on Monday, the report from the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence on reorganisation of the treaties. The study, produced at the request of the Commission, proposes to bring together, in a "fundamental treaty" of the European Union, the most essential elements which currently appear in the different treaties. It would comprise 95 Articles, with provisions relating to the foundations of the Union, to fundamental rights and to European citizenship. The draft treaty, which in no way modifies the current EU law, also includes essential institutional provisions (composition, functions, voting procedures) and the Union's political goals. It would be completed by two protocols on: (1) common foreign and security policy and (2) police and legal cooperation, as well as by the treaty establishing the European Community, without the provisions transferred into the body of the Fundamental Treaty. President Prodi entrusted examination of the report to the Commission's services. After discussion within the college, the Commission should present, in July, its conclusions to the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). The report may be consulted on the site: http: //europa.eu.int/igc2000/. The group of lawyers, coordinated by Professors Claus Dieter Ehlerman and Yves Mény, did not give its stance on the possibility of resorting to two revision procedures in future, with a traditional method requiring unanimity and heavy ratification for the hard core of the treaty and a more flexible Community method for the other parties. This possibility, hardly touched upon in the introduction, will be the subject of a complementary study to be presented before the summer.
Commissioner Barnier welcomed this "objective work" or reorganisation of the treaties which allows "all rights and competences being equal" to put an end to its "extreme complexity". "For the first time, we have a text which seems to me to be easy-to-read not only by law professors but also by citizens", he added. "We thus have the proof of the legal feasibility of treaty reorganisation. The IGC and the European Council of Nice should give its view on the political feasibility".