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The June 29th Summit tasked Council President van Rompuy (HvR) with preparing a report:
“Following an open exchange of views, where various opinions were expressed, the President of the European Council was invited to develop, in close collaboration with the President of the Commission, the President of the Eurogroup and the President of the ECB, a specific and time-bound road map for the achievement of a genuine Economic and Monetary Union, which will include concrete proposals on preserving the unity and integrity of the Single Market in financial services and which will take account of the Euro Area statement and, inter alia, of the intention of the Commission to bring forward proposals under Article 127. They will examine what can be done within the current Treaties and which measures would require Treaty change. In order to ensure their ownership, Member States will be closely associated to the reflections and regularly consulted. There will also be consultations with the European Parliament. An interim report will be presented in October 2012 and a final report before the end of the year.”
In mid-September, HvR published a 14 page “Issues Paper” (link) that asked the Member States their views on various topics. The Presidency has engaged in a series of bilateral discussions about the answers. The second phase of collaboration with the other Presidents would then follow. Thereafter, comes the difficult task of distilling the replies down to the common ground, and red lines of some states. For the October Summit, perhaps there will be some `low-hanging fruit’ that does not require any Treaty change. Yesterday, the FT published (link) the early draft Conclusions for the Summit which lay out plans to complete many of the Single Market and financial services measures already on the table.
That would leave the December Summit to tackle the more profound topics. But even that session may well not agree on Treaty texts but specify the process to be used in the next year or so to work out possible deals. According to Andrew Duff’s new book (link), that would leave the new Commission/Parliament of 2014 ready for a Convention in Spring 2015 to prepare a new Treaty. (For the UK, that would neatly coincide with the May 2105 General Election and ensure that `Europe’ has a place in the discussions!)
As the Council President draws together all these strands for his Interim Report, the next two weeks should bring many stories about what might be store for the October Summit.