The new EU’s external action: a significant step forward toward the EU’s single voice?

In the wake of the difficult negotiations in the Nice European Council in December 2000 scheduled to set up a new institutional architecture for the European Union (EU), the Member States accorded to initiate a wide and long-term debate on the future of Europe. In other words,
it had been demonstrated that the formula of a Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), where only representatives of the Governments were present, was an obsolete system for the reform of the EU Treaties. The debate on the future of the EU, which formally began in March 2001, changed the nature of the reform. Instead of attempting to reorganize the EU over the shortterm, it was envisaged to formulate a long-term EU, reform with the horizon of a European Constitution and with the participation of a wider spectrum of actors in its making.