REFORM OF THE TREATY ON THE EUROPEAN UNION: IMPLEMENT IMPOSSIBLE ABANDON

Abstract

The article addresses the discussions in the European Union that broke out after closing of the Conference on the future of Europe. The author consistently analyzes the positions of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, while identifying differences between both EU institutions and Member States. The stumbling block is the prospects for the EU institutional reform, which can be carried out both by changing the Treaty on the European Union and without convening the Convention, but only by applying the «passerelle» clause, which provides an opportunity to move from unanimity to voting by qualified majority in the Council on a number of important issues. The author emphasizes that an additional motivation for the European Parliament to call for cancelling of unanimity was the threat of blocking sanctions against Russia by certain countries. The second part of the article examines the development of European Political Community (EPC), the idea, which was put forward by French President Macron at the end of the Conference. The author argues that the plans to create the EPC as a «light legal structure with decisionmaking powers» are directly related to implementation of institutional reform, namely, unanimity cancelling. Thus, scientific and political discussions are conducted around fundamental directions – the ratio of deepening and expanding European integration.