Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main trends of differentiation between different linguistic (English vs. Italian) and chronological versions (the 2003 draft vs. the 2004 final version) of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The analysis of the sample texts taken from the Preamble and from the first three articles of Part I, both in the 2003 draft and in the 2004 final version, offers both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective on the variations. A synchronic analysis of the linguistic differences between the two versions of the 2003 draft reveals a tendency towards ‘conceptual concordance’ (Sarcevic 1997), in that discrepancies are due to or instrumental to the production of the same legal effects. This aspect is of primary importance for parallel normative texts in a multicultural context. The diachronic comparison reveals instead that a significant number of the differences aim at ‘harmonization’ (Sarcevic 1997) - i.e., formal coherence and terminological consistency, the features on which the clarity and intelligibility of a normative text highly depend.
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