The German Council Presidency II: From Berlin Declaration to Road Map

Abstract

By the end of March 2007, so with three months to go before the June European Council, the German Council Presidency had made some formally recorded progress towards securing agreement on a road map for the EU to extricate it from the constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands nearly two years previously. The Berlin Declaration envisaged a ‘renewed common basis’ being in place before June 2009 and there was a broad consensus emerging on carrying forward the Constitutional Treaty’s reforms to a new treaty. It had also emerged that the German Council Presidency’s ambitions for the June European Council extended beyond simply a road map to possible agreement on launching an IGC under the incoming Portuguese Council Presidency in the second half of 2007. There were also suggestions that it was contemplating seeking agreement on a detailed mandate for this IGC. For Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the EP and a fellow member of Merkel’s CDU, there was an 85% chance of securing a new treaty by the end of the year (Agence Europe, 2007e: 3).