EU Reform Treaty Impact Assessment

The Lords report published today may be browsed from this link! Highlights will be available on this blog over the coming weekend. In the meantime I will merely offer this quote on the matter of "shall" on which this blog had much to say over recent months: Articles 14-19 TEU impose duties on the institutions of the Union. Each begins in French with the mandatory present which is translated into English using "shall", e.g. Article 16, where the original French reads: "Le Conseil exerce, conjointement avec le Parlement européen, les fonctions législative et budgétaire. Il exerce des fonctions de définition des politiques et de coordination conformément aux conditions prévues par les traités", which is translated as: "The Council shall, jointly with the European Parliament, exercise legislative and budgetary functions. It shall carry out policy-making and coordinating functions as laid down in the Treaties." It is very unlikely that the Court of Justice would ever have to interpret Article 12 of the amended TEU. If it did, while an argument could be made that Article 12 imposes duties on national Parliaments, it is highly unlikely that such an argument would succeed, having regard to the context and the understanding of the Member States as to its interpretation (mentioned in Chapter 11 of this report).