Treaties of The European Union - Abandoned Treaties

Abandoned Treaties

Treaty instituting a European Defence Community.

Following on from the success of the Treaty of Paris, efforts were made to allow West Germany to rearm within the framework of a European military structure in the form of a European Defence Community. The treaty was signed by the six members on 27 May 1952 and the Common Assembly began drafting a treaty for a European Political Community to ensure democratic accountability of the new army, but this treaty was abandoned when the Defence Community treaty was rejected by the French National Assembly on 30 August 1954.

1973 and 1995 Acts of Accession of Norway

Norway has tried to join the European Communities/Union on two occasions, on both occasions a national referendum returned a negative result leading Norway to turn down membership. The first treaty was signed in Brussels on 22 January 1972 and the second in Corfu on 24 June 1994.

Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (the European Constitution)

The European Constitution was a treaty that would have repealed and consolidated all previous overlapping treaties (except the Euratom treaty) into a single document. It also made changes to voting systems, simplified the structure of the EU and advanced co-operation in foreign policy. The treaty was signed in Rome on 29 October 2004 and was due to come into force on 1 November 2006 if it was ratified by all member states. However, this did not occur, with France rejecting the document in a national referendum on 29 May 2005 and then the Netherlands in their own referendum on 1 June 2005. Although it had been ratified by a number of member states, following a "period of reflection", the constitution in that form was scrapped and replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon.

2011 European Stability Mechanism treaty

After the negotiations to amend Article 136 succeeded in March 2011, the leaders of the EU came to an agreement on a permanent stability fund for the eurozone called the European Stability Mechanism on 11 July 2011. It was decided that the ESM would have a size of 500 billion euros, by replacing the non-permanent European Financial Stability Fund and the European Financial Stability Mechanism. However, as the European sovereign debt crisis worsened, the leaders decided not to ratify the treaty as they planned several changes in the ESM, thus scrapping the original concept. The subsequent version of the ESM treaty was signed on 2 February 2012.