Brussels, 20/11/2006 (Agence Europe) -Several former European Heads of State or Government got together in Florence on 17 November, to call for a relaunch of the reform process of the institutions, by changing the current text of the constitutional treaty. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who chaired the Convention tasked with drafting the constitutional treaty, and former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, the former Italian and Portuguese Presidents, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Jorge Sampaio, the Greek ex-prime minister, Costas Simitis, and the former German Foreign Affairs Minister, Joschka Fischer, were among the signatories of the joint declaration calling for (our translation) a "political upturn from all parties concerned so that the new process can be concluded at the same time as the election of the new European Parliament in spring 2009". Meeting for a colloquium organised by the European University Institute of Florence, these European figures would like to keep parts I and II as they are, but to clarify the contentious points of part III detailing the policies of the EU, with a requirement to add an additional protocol. (ab)