Portugal plans draft treaty for end July

The Portuguese government, which is poised to take over the presidency of the EU, plans to present a first draft of a new treaty to member states before the end of July in order to have it adopted at a summit in October, according to diplomats.

Following the agreement on the broad content of a Reform Treaty and a Treaty on the Functioning of the Union reached at the summit last week (21-23 June), Portugal will start work on the drafting as soon as it takes over the EU presidency from Germany on 1 July.

"They have the feeling, and they are right, that the more they wait, the greater is the risk of member states developing different interpretations of last week’s agreement," said one EU official. "Also, I am not sure they are sure they all understood the deal presented at 5am," he added.

"The plan is to put on paper what the leaders agreed last weekend before the summer break. That would allow diplomats to take the draft with them as beach-reading and get back to the presidency with some feedback by the end of August," said one diplomat.

Before opening the treaty-drafting intergovernmental conference (IGC), Portugal needs to receive opinions from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank. The Commission will present its opinion on 10 July, MEPs will adopt theirs on 11 July and the bank is also expected to deliver it on time for the opening of the IGC.

The IGC will be formally launched at the foreign ministers’ meeting on 23-24 July. After several meetings of legal experts and possibly government leaders’ sherpas, foreign ministers will discuss the treaty once more at their informal meeting in Viana de Castelo on 7-8 September.

Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates said that the aim would be for the treaty to be adopted at the informal EU summit on 18-19 October, in Lisbon. It will not, though, be ready to be signed before the December summit in Brussels, as lawyers will need to check all the translations before the leaders put their signatures on it.

Several EU leaders, including France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, have indicated that they will seek to ratify the treaty very quickly after it is signed.

The Portuguese government, which is poised to take over the presidency of the EU, plans to present a first draft of a new treaty to member states before the end of July in order to have it adopted at a summit in October, according to diplomats.