Sunday 20 June 2010

EU Intergovernmental Conference on Wednesday

Usually, Intergovernmental Conferences to change the EU Treaties receive quite some attention of the continent.

This time, it is different:

Almost unnoticed, the Spanish EU-Council Presidency has invited to an Intergovernmental Conference on the level of Permanent Representatives (that is, the ambassadors of the EU member states) for next Wednesday, 23 June 2010, to agree on the changing of the EU Treaties to allow 18 new members of the European Parliament to officially take part in the EP's work.

The exact distribution of these 18 can be found in the respective additional protocol laid out in European Council document EUCO 11/10 (page 11).

Since this will be a Treaty change, all EU member countries will need to ratify it according to their national procedures.

4 comments:

Ralf Grahn said...

Julien,

Disgracefully, the proposed (and agreed) text allows for ad hoc elections, which are not proportional, and even for appointment of national parliamentarians without any 'European' election.

Let us hope that the national prliaments force the governments to use the EP elections 2009 as reference, on objective grounds.

Anonymous said...

Julien,

Thanks for this info. Do you happen to know if the IGC will also discuss the 'Irish Protocol' (the legal "guarantees" they were given to support a second vote on the Lisbon Treaty) and the adjoining of the Czech Republic to the Polish/UK Protocol on the Charter of Fundamental Rights?

Ralf Grahn said...

Anonymous,

I haven't checked in detail, but my understanding is that this IGC is going to deal with the so called ghost MEPs only.

Your issues are destined for the next accession act, I think.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Prof. Grahn. That's what it appeared to look like from the IGC mandate, but given the nature of the Irish guarantees I wondered if they might be tagged on to an IGC behind the scenes. Obviously the "earliest available opportunity" to add the Irish guarantees to the Treaties doesn't mean earliest possible opportunity!