Amato Group

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Former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato lead the group. Giuliano Amato 20 September 2007.jpg
Former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato lead the group.

The Amato Group, officially the Action Committee for European Democracy (ACED) was a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as the Treaty of Lisbon following its rejection by French and Dutch voters.

Contents

The group was backed by the Barroso Commission, who sent two representatives, the commissioners Danuta Hübner (regional policy) and Margot Wallström (communications). It was led by Giuliano Amato, a former Prime Minister of Italy who was also Vice-President of the original European Convention. [1]

Members

The group consisted of 16 members from 14 member states of the European Union, including one current European Commissioner: [2]

NameMember stateReason for inclusion
Giuliano Amato Flag of Italy.svg  Italy former Prime Minister of Italy and Vice-President of the European Convention
Michel Barnier Flag of France.svg  France former French Foreign Minister and European Commissioner
Stefan Collignon (de)Flag of Germany.svg  Germany Professor and political economist
Jean-Luc Dehaene Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium former Prime Minister of Belgium and Vice-President of the European Convention
Danuta Hübner Flag of Poland.svg  Poland former European Commissioner for Regional Policy
Sandra Kalniete Flag of Latvia.svg  Latvia former Latvian European Commissioner
Wim Kok Flag of the Netherlands.svg  Netherlands former Prime Minister of the Netherlands
Paavo Lipponen Flag of Finland.svg  Finland former Prime Minister of Finland
János Martonyi Flag of Hungary.svg  Hungary former Hungarian Foreign Minister
Inigo Mendez de Vigo Flag of Spain.svg  Spain Member of the European Parliament
Chris Patten Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom British Lord and former European Commissioner
Otto Schily Flag of Germany.svg  Germany former German Interior Minister
Costas Simitis Flag of Greece.svg  Greece former Prime Minister of Greece
Dominique Strauss-Kahn Flag of France.svg  France former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
António Vitorino Flag of Portugal.svg  Portugal former Portuguese European Commissioner
Margot Wallström Flag of Sweden.svg  Sweden former Vice-President of the European Commission and currently Swedish Minister for foreign affairs

Resulting text

The group first met in Rome on 30 September 2006. On 4 June 2007 they released the completed draft text. The size of the text is cut from 63,000 words in 448 articles in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (EU Constitution) to 12,800 in 70 articles in the proposed text of a new EU-treaty. [3] The sized down text came from including only the innovations contained in the third part of the EU Constitution – which essentially ties together former EU treaties – and putting them into additional protocols. The two protocols would be attached to the existing Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community.

The text stripped the rejected constitution of its constitutional elements, including the article on the EU's symbols and the controversial "God-less" preamble, reduced the Charter of Fundamental Rights to one legally binding article and foresees a new name for new EU foreign policy chief, called 'Union foreign minister' in the Constitution.

Structure of the new treaty

The new treaty would not include everything in a single document, as the Constitution would do, but rather: [4]

As a result, the new TEU defines the framework of the European Union, whereas the amended TEC defines in detail the law and decision making procedures, what the policy areas of the Union are, and which law or decision making procedure should be followed in a certain policy area. Both treaties would have the same legal value, as is the case with the current TEU and TEC. Furthermore, the Charter of Fundamental Rights would have the same legal value as the new TEU and the amended TEC.

Differences between the new TEU and the European Constitution

Titles I to IX of the new TEU are literally taken over from Part I of the European Constitution, with only the following modifications: [4]

Furthermore, the article concerning the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs is maintained in the new TEU (Article I-28 of the European Constitution, Article 27 of the new treaty), but the Amato Group has stated it has no problem with a name change. [5]

See also

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References

  1. "Select group of politicians to tackle EU constitution". EUobserver.com. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-07-08. Alt URL
  2. "The way forward for the European Union" (PDF). Action Committee for European Democracy. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-07-08. Retrieved 2007-07-08.
  3. "A New Treaty and Supplementary Protocols" (PDF). Action Committee for European Democracy. 2007-06-22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-04-11. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
  4. 1 2 "Explanatory Memorandum" (PDF). Action Committee for European Democracy. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-07-08. Retrieved 2007-07-08.
  5. "High-level group writes new-look EU treaty". EUobserver.com. Archived from the original on 8 July 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-08.