Call for radical cuts in treaties

Date: 26/10/1995

By Rory Watson

HALF of the 1,000 articles of the European Union's basic constitution are effectively redundant and should be repealed, according to the first authoritative analysis of the 15 core legal texts involved.

The study commissioned by the European Parliament is being examined, along with a separate report from the Council of Ministers' own legal advisors, by the independent Reflection Group preparing next year's review of the Maastricht Treaty.

Supporters of moves to simplify the various EU treaties argue these have been approved over the past 40 years without any serious thought of a coherent structure.

They believe the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) offers a unique opportunity to carry out a serious tidying up exercise for the first time and present a more easily understood picture of the Union to a wider public.

But privately some senior diplomats fear that if the changes are far-reaching, anti-EU parties in countries which only require parliamentary approval will seize on the reforms to demand referenda as well.

Spanish European Affairs Minister Carlos Westendorp, who chairs the group, insisted yesterday (25 October) that the treaty had to be “simplified”, although several members have warned of the practical problems involved.

The Parliament-commissioned report prepared by Dr Roland Bieber, of the Université de Lausanne, concludes that 533 separate articles could easily be repealed without affecting the basic corpus of community law.

Of these, 150 have been overtaken by events and become obsolete. The treaties contain special references to Greenland which left the Union in 1984 and to the former East Germany which was reunited in 1990. Others involve specific transition measures which have now been completed or to protocols which no longer apply.

A further 239 articles in the various treaties duplicate each other, largely because the present Union emerged from the three separate European Communities established in the 1950s.

The remaining articles could be simplified by transferring and reordering them within the treaties without upsetting some of the delicate political compromises now enshrined in law.

According to one Reflection Group source: “The two studies are quite complementary. The Parliament's one goes into great detail on where cuts can be made, while the Council's report indicates possible approaches like simplifying, merging, or restructuring the treaties.”

Various EU institutions such as the Commission, Parliament and the Court of Justice, as well as national parliaments, have all issued recent calls for simplification of the EU treaties to banish the image of complexity and opacity created by the Maastricht treaty.

According to a senior Swedish source: “We support the idea. We feel it would have a positive public impact. This is what people want to see emerge from the review process.”

Some involved in the drafting of the controversial Maastricht text have even suggested it be redrafted, although French European Affairs Minister Michel Barnier warned of the dangers of a radical overhaul when he said: “I am all for simplification and tidying up, but if we rewrite the treaties we would need to ratify them again.”

EU governments recognise that any changes to the current treaties agreed in next year's IGC will require ratification in all 15 member countries. Some of these, but by no means all, require referenda.

Explaining his report Dr Bieber, a lawyer who had previously worked for the European Parliament, said this week: “If you just amend you never reduce the total number of articles and this just generates further complexity. Right from the beginning I think this is the wrong approach.”

He is convinced that if clear political direction is given it would be possible for a working group involving senior Commission, Parliament and member state officials to prepare a paper before the IGC opens next year suggesting how the treaties could be simplified and obsolete articles discarded.