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From Laeken to Lisbon ...
The 27 adopt the Reform Treaty

Italy (and the EP) wins one seat

On 19 October 2007, the saga of amending the treaties, which began in Laeken on 15 December 2001, came to a provisional conclusion. All that remains for Member States is … to ratify it!

The adoption of the new distribution of seats for the EP from 2009, alongside the Reform Treaty, was always going to be delicate. Happily for all of us and surprisingly for some, the proposals based on the Lamassoure-Severin report were adopted just like that, well almost. There is 1/751th of a difference - the 27 agreed to give an additional seat to Italy, at the firm request of the Italian delegation. Italy will now have 73 seats, the same as the British allocation. As a result, the EP will now have 751 seats from 2009, compared to the original 750.

A brief summary of the main events:

December 2001: ‘Laeken Declaration’, ‘paving the way towards a constitution for European citizens’ and convening a Convention.
The Convention meets over a period of 16 months. Chaired by former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, it is made up of 105 members, mainly European and national MPs, representatives of the governments and of the Commission, and also observers from candidate states for accession.
July 2003: the Convention adopts a ‘draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’, commonly known as the ‘Constitutional Treaty ’or quite simply as the ‘European Constitution’.
October 2003-June 2004: the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) examines the draft Constitutional Treaty.
October 2004: the 25 adopt the Constitutional Treaty in Rome.
February 2005: Spain adopts the Treaty by referendum.
Spring 2005: France, followed by the Netherlands, rejects the Treaty by referendum.
January 2007: the German Presidency puts the ‘institutional train’ back on the rails.
25 March 2007: on the 50th anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Rome, the Bonn Declaration sets 2009 as the deadline for moving Europe out of the institutional status quo.
23 June 2007: the European Council adopts an extremely precise mandate for revising the Treaties: it no longer refers to a Constitution but to an amending Treaty, sometimes also called the Reform Treaty (Treaty establishing the European Community - TEC – and Treaty on European Union - TEU) and opens an ICG.
July 2007: the EP approves the launch of the ICG.
July-September 2007: experts set out the European Council’s agreement in legal terms.
11 October 2007: in adopting the Lamassoure-Severin report, the EP proposes a distribution of seats for an EP of 750 MEPs to the European Council. It considers that the adoption of that proposal, requested by the June European Council, must be linked to adoption of the Reform Treaty.
18-19 October 2007: at the informal Lisbon European Council, the ICG adopts the Reform Treaty. That means the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) is maintained. It incorporates the main institutional innovations and drops the section on ‘police and criminal justice’ (the ‘third pillar’ in EU jargon); the TEC is maintained but rechristened ‘Treaty on the functioning of the Union’. The intention in the Constitution to merge the two treaties has therefore been abandoned.
Main innovations in relation to the existing Treaties

The EP becomes a legislator like the Council in the great majority of fields. After the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty is a second revolution for the EP’s powers.
The European Council exchanges its rotating presidency for a long-term presidency.
The High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) combines his powers in the field of foreign policy with powers in the field of external relations. He chairs the Council of Foreign Ministers and becomes Vice-President of the European Commission.
The areas of police and criminal justice leave the intergovernmental sphere and are to a large extent communitarised.
A simplified voting procedure is introduced in the Council, based on a double majority, 55% of the States and 65% of the population.
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