Hello, welcome to the second sales lunchtime seminar of the term.

Today I would like to welcome Professor Alan Dashwood, who is going to talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Alan.

Thank you. Okay. Well, we'll see at the end whether it's a wolf or a sheep. The

Reform Treaty's full title is Treaty amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty

Establishing the European Community and the treaty establishing the European

community, a bit of a mouthful, I wonder if they may decide to call it the Treaty of Lisbon

because that's where it's likely to be agreed at the end of this week. The constitutional treaty

which it replaced replaced was designed to repeal and replace the

TEU, the treaty on the European Union and the EC Treaty.

In other words, it would have been a completely new constitutional text.

In contrast, the Reform Treaty is a conventional amending treaty

just like the Treaty of Amsterdam or the Treaty of Nice.

It consists of seven articles, one enormous, an enormous Article 1 containing

amendments to the T.E.U. That lists that there are 62 points under Article 1 and an even bigger

Article 2, which amends the EC

treaty on 294 points and then the remaining five articles are simply final provisions.

That is the typical structure of reforming treaties. They're completely unreadable,

but it doesn't matter because once they've done their work, the only text you need to worry about

is the consolidated text of the foundational treatise which they amend.

In addition to the seven articles of the RT itself, there are 12 protocols, including

a very substantial protocol 10 on transitional provisions and an even bigger protocol 11 with amendments

...