Reform of the Treaty on the European Union: Implement Impossible Abandon

Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences - Tập 92 - Trang S1282-S1288 - 2023
O. Yu. Potemkina1
1Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Tóm tắt

This article addresses the discussions in the European Union that broke out in the frames of the Conference on the future of Europe and after its closing. The author consistently analyzes the positions of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, while identifying differences between both EU institutions and Member States. The stumbling block is the prospects for the EU institutional reform, which can be carried out both by changing the Treaty on the European Union and without convening the Convention, but only by applying the “passerelle” clause, which provides an opportunity to move from unanimity to voting by qualified majority in the Council on a number of important issues. The author emphasizes that an additional motivation for the European Parliament to call for cancelling of unanimity was the threat of blocking sanctions against Russia by certain countries. The second part of the article examines the development of the idea of the European Political Community (EPC), put forward by French President Macron at the end of the Conference. The author argues that the plans to create the EPC as a “light legal structure with decision–making powers” are directly related to implementation of institutional reform, namely, unanimity cancelling. Thus, scientific and political discussions are conducted around fundamental directions—the relationof deepening and expanding European integration.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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