Amato Group Explained

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.

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]

Name	Member state	Reason for inclusion
Giuliano Amato		former Prime Minister of Italy and Vice-President of the European Convention
Michel Barnier		former French Foreign Minister and European Commissioner
Stefan Collignon (de)		Professor and political economist
Jean-Luc Dehaene		former Prime Minister of Belgium and Vice-President of the European Convention
Danuta Hübner		former European Commissioner for Regional Policy
Sandra Kalniete		former Latvian European Commissioner
Wim Kok		former Prime Minister of the Netherlands
Paavo Lipponen		former Prime Minister of Finland
János Martonyi		former Hungarian Foreign Minister
Inigo Mendez de Vigo		Member of the European Parliament
Chris Patten		British Lord and former European Commissioner
Otto Schily		former German Interior Minister
Costas Simitis		former Prime Minister of Greece
Dominique Strauss-Kahn		former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
António Vitorino		former Portuguese European Commissioner
Margot Wallström		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]

Replace the Treaty on European Union (TEU, or Maastricht Treaty) with the text of the new treaty, which roughly corresponds with Part I and Part IV of the European Constitution. The nine titles of Part I of the European Constitution are literally taken over as titles I to IX of the new TEU (except for three modifications, see below). Title X is a new title that contains two short articles referring to the Treaty establishing the European Community (see next point) and two articles originally from Part IV of the Constitution regarding two simplified revision procedures. Title XI is similar to the rest of Part IV of the Constitution.
Amend the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC, or Treaty of Rome) to have most provisions of Part III of the European Constitution included in the treaty, including the single legal personality of the Union and the suppression of the pillar structure. In order to avoid any legal confusion, the words "European Community" would be replaced by "European Union" in the text of the TEC. The Intergovernmental Conference agreeing on the new treaty may also decide to rename the treaty (to Treaty establishing the European Union for example), like has been done before by the Maastricht Treaty. The Treaty establishing the European Community is to be amended by means of two protocols attached to the new treaty:
- A Protocol on the Functioning of the Union, containing institutional changes;
- A Protocol on the Development of the Union's Policies in Order to Meet the Challenges of the XXI Century, containing the innovations of the European Constitution.
Refer to the existing Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in article 8 of the new TEU, whereby it becomes legally binding. Article I-9 of the European Constitution referred to Part II of the Constitution in a similar manner. The charter will be updated to the version included in Part II of the European Constitution, which slightly differs from the original charter.

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:

The preamble of the European Constitution, as well as Article I-1 (Establishment of the Union) and Article I-8 (The symbols of the Union), are not taken over as such, because of their constitutional character. Article 1 of the new treaty would instead be similar to Article 1 of the current Treaty on European Union. The rather long preamble of the European Constitution would be replaced by a sentence explaining the need for a new treaty, and possibly referring to the Berlin Declaration of March 27, 2007.
An additional paragraph is added to section 1 of Article 8 of the new TEU (was Article I-9 of the European Constitution), which states that with the entry into force of the new Treaty, the Charter of Fundamental Rights will become legally binding.
References to other articles in the original text of the European Constitution are replaced by references to the new places of the articles, i.e. in the new TEU, in the amended TEC, or in the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

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]

Notes and References

Web site: Select group of politicians to tackle EU constitution . 2007-07-08 . EUobserver.com . https://web.archive.org/web/20070930014523/http://euobserver.com/9/22527 . 2007-09-30. Alt URL
Web site: The way forward for the European Union . 2007-07-08 . Action Committee for European Democracy . PDF . https://web.archive.org/web/20070708035001/http://www.eui.eu/RSCAS/e-texts/ACED2007_DECLARATION_4JUNE07.pdf . 2007-07-08 . dead .
Web site: A New Treaty and Supplementary Protocols. Action Committee for European Democracy. 2007-06-22. 2008-03-08. PDF. https://web.archive.org/web/20080411181055/http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/e-texts/ACED2007_NewTreatyMemorandum-04_06.pdf. 2008-04-11. dead.
Web site: Explanatory Memorandum . 2007-07-08 . Action Committee for European Democracy . PDF . https://web.archive.org/web/20070708034933/http://www.eui.eu/RSCAS/e-texts/ACED2007_NewTreatyMemorandum-04_06.pdf . 2007-07-08 . dead .
Web site: High-level group writes new-look EU treaty . 2007-07-08 . EUobserver.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20070708160637/http://euobserver.com/9/24187. 8 July 2007 . live.