European Constitution to European Reform Treaty

The Treaty had the cumbersome working title "Draft Treaty Amending The Treaty On European Union And The Treaty Establishing The European Community" - but it will most likely be called "Reform Treaty," a term used by EU leaders in June.

The core of the text has 145 pages, accompanied by 132 pages of protocols and declarations. There are a total of 12 protocols and 51 declarations.

The rejected Constitution had 475 pages of text, but this document was intended to replace all EU Treaties from the past. The newly-proposed Reform Treaty merely amends the existing Maastricht and Rome Treaties, which will legally continue to exist under different names.

Think of the Constitution and Treaty as equations, don't worry this will make sense. Let us assume that the old treaties are T1, T2, T3, T4 etc. and the Constitution is C, if the new treaty is Tz and the minor differences are D. We can see that:

T1..x+Tz=C-D

According to various European bigwigs T1..x+Tz=C-D=C*0.90 or T1..x+Tz=C-D=C*0.95 or even T1..x+Tz=C-D=C*0.99


Come on Gordon, I remember you recently said "I did maths at school and for one year at university but I don’t think I was ever very good at it - and some people would say it shows," , However this was back when you must have learnt something at school, so what would your formula be? One of your MPs recently commented in a letter to a constituent that the Treaty and Constitution were as different as "Fish and Fowl", what do you say?