November 2004

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EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION SIGNED, LITHUANIA THE FIRST STATE TO RATIFY IT

November 2004 – One more significant step has been made along the road to European integration, with the historical signature of the European Constitution. The “Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” was signed in Rome by the Heads of State or Government of the 25 Member States and the 3 candidate countries on 29 October and now the ratification process has started. This long process will be completed as soon as all signatory states have lodged their ratification instrument and have officially notified it, which is expected to happen by the second half of 2006. Only then will the Treaty enter into force and become effective, in principle, according to the Treaty, on 1 November 2006. However, each Member State will decide to ratify it in accordance with its own constitutional procedures and, depending on the countries' legal and historical traditions, the procedures laid down by the constitutions for this purpose are not identical. They comprise either the “parliamentary” method or the “referendum” method, or both. There may be even variants or combinations of these two methods, as in some cases some national constitutions will have to be amended.

Within this process, one state has already ratified the Treaty: Lithuania, which chose to decide it through the “parliamentary” method. The results of the vote in the Parliament, carried out on 11 November, were as follows: 84 votes for the ratification, 4 against and 3 abstentions. However, there still remain 24 more states to adopt the text, which will constitute a big challenge, as it is still uncertain what the results will be. Up to now already 9 states have announced that they will hold a referendum: the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The first referendum will be held in Spain, on 20 February 2005.

As regards linguistic references, the final text of the Treaty includes several articles, the number of which in some cases has changed as compared with the text submitted by the European Convention. The main ones refer to: the Union’s objective to “respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity“ (Article I-3(3)), the citizens’ right to address the institutions of the Union “in any of the Constitution’s languages and obtain a reply in the same language” (Articles I-10(2)(d), II-101(4), and III-128), and to the authentic texts (21) and translations of the Constitution (Article IV-448). In particular, the second paragraph of the article on the Constitution’s languages (IV-448, formerly known as Article IV-10) establishes the possibility that Member States provide a translation of the Treaty into any other languages “among those which, in accordance with their constitutional order, enjoy official status in all or part of their territory”. Further to this article, a declaration was added in the Final Act (Declaration no. 29) confirming “the attachment of the Union to the cultural diversity of Europe and the special attention it will continue to pay to [the languages mentioned in Article IV-448] and other languages. Moreover, another declaration makes reference to the Sami language (Declaration on the Sami people, no. 32).

For more information, see previous Mercator-Legislation’s News: April, May, June, July, and September 2004.