Vol. 472 No. 7
43 Mr. R. Burke asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs whether there are two prominent gaps in the draft treaty to be presented to EU leaders at the Dublin Summit in December 1996, and whether detailed proposals on institutional reform and the development of a more flexible EU will be largely absent from the text. [23973/96]
There are no gaps in the "general outline for a draft revision of the Treaties" which has been prepared by the Irish Presidency at the request of the Florence European Council in June. This will be clear from a reading of the document, a copy of which has been lodged in the Oireachtas Library.
The outline draft treaty will be submitted to the Heads of State or Government at the European Council meeting in Dublin later this week. It is designed to provide a good basis for the further work of the Conference with a view to seeking final agreement under the Netherlands Presidency at Amsterdam on a treaty which would equip the Union to address the challenges ahead and to respond to the aspirations of its citizens.
In most cases the outline draft treaty takes the form of suggested treaty texts. In a small number of important areas, notably certain sensitive institutional questions and the issue of flexibility, the Presidency have reflected the generally held view that, with a further six months of negotiations ahead, it would be preferable not to put forward specific texts in treaty language at this stage. However, the Presidency has highlighted the importance of these issues in its outline draft treaty. It has sought to analyse and clarify the issues, to set out in detail the present state of discussions and where appropriate to outline options with a view to helping the Netherlands Presidency to find solutions in the later stages of the Conference when the final trade-offs must take place.
