Constitution for Europe

The treaty agreed at Nice in December 2000 was a messy compromise that left no one satisfied. Moreover, the Nice summit had plumbed new depths in the sort of acrimonious, late-night horse-trading behind closed doors that does not exactly endear EU politicians to voters. So when EU leaders met at Laeken in Brussels in 2001, they decided that a new treaty was needed and that it should be elaborated in a more open, inclusive way. For 18 months in 2002 and 2003, a “Convention on the Future of Europe” presided over by former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and comprising EU and national politicians met in Brussels, for the most part in public. The new treaty it agreed was grandiosely baptised the “Constitution for Europe”. In fact, it wasn’t much more of a constitution than any of the previous treaties and its name was more a sop to Giscard’s ego than anything else. And the Convention that drafted it soon came under fire for being less open and democratic in practice than it was on paper. Still, governments approved a slightly amended version of the constitution in 2004 and it was signed in Rome’s city hall, the Campidoglio, that same year. Voters, however, turned out to be less than enthused by Giscard’s tome: it was resoundingly rejected by the French and Dutch in referenda in the spring of 2005, plunging the EU into an unprecedented crisis of confidence. The Lisbon Treaty, agreed two years later, contains most of the reforms originally set out in the Constitution for Europe.