Developing a Constitution for the Union

Abstract

Abstract At the Laeken European Council in December 2001 the EU forma11y launched a debate about ‘The future of Europe’ and agreed on a wide ranging agenda for the next intergovernmental conference (IGC) to be held in 2004. The IGC will mark a new departure for governments in the EU because, for the first time, the focus of an IGC will centre on the constitutional character of the Union rather than on new functional objectives such as the single market, the single currency or enlargement. These earlier, functionally oriented IGCs certainly had constitutional consequences for the Member States. But now there is a clear change in emphasis. Governments are preparing for negotiations on procedures and institutions without attaching the discussion to some major new policy departure. What is more, the Laeken Declaration cautiously raises the question whether the simplification and reorganization of the Union’s Treaties ‘might not lead in the Long run to the adoption of a constitutional text in the Union’. There is wide spread support within the Convention for aiming at the text of a ‘constitutional treaty’.