The Amato Group , officially the Action Committee for European Democracy ( ACED ) was a group of high-level European politicians unofficially working, over 2006–2007, on rewriting the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe into what became known as the Treaty of Lisbon (December 2007) following the earlier treaty's rejection, in 2005, by referendums in France and the Netherlands .
5-727: Led by Giuliano Amato (thus the group's unofficial name), a former Prime Minister of Italy who was also Vice-President of the original European Convention , the group was backed by the Barroso Commission , who sent two representatives, the commissioners Danuta Hübner (regional policy) and Margot Wallström (communications). The group consisted of 16 members from 14 member states of the European Union, including one current European Commissioner : The group first met in Rome on 30 September 2006. On 4 June 2007 they released
10-549: The Constitution. The new treaty would not include everything in a single document, as the Constitution would do, but rather: As a result, the new TEU defines the framework of the European Union, whereas the amended TEC defines in detail the law and decision making procedures , what the policy areas of the Union are, and which law or decision making procedure should be followed in a certain policy area. Both treaties would have
15-592: The completed draft text. The size of the text is cut from 63,000 words in 448 articles in the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (EU Constitution) to 12,800 in 70 articles in the proposed text of a new EU-treaty. The sized down text came from including only the innovations contained in the third part of the EU Constitution – which essentially ties together former EU treaties – and putting them into additional protocols. The two protocols would be attached to
20-664: The existing Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community. The text stripped the rejected constitution of its constitutional elements, including the article on the EU's symbols and the controversial "God-less" preamble, reduced the Charter of Fundamental Rights to one legally binding article and foresees a new name for new EU foreign policy chief, called 'Union foreign minister' in
25-551: The same legal value, as is the case with the current TEU and TEC. Furthermore, the Charter of Fundamental Rights would have the same legal value as the new TEU and the amended TEC. Titles I to IX of the new TEU are literally taken over from Part I of the European Constitution, with only the following modifications: Furthermore, the article concerning the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs is maintained in
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