Paris, 22 October 2004. – The French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Michel Barnier, yesterday welcomed some 100 members of the Assembly at the Quai d’Orsay for a reception to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1954 Agreements that modified the Brussels Treaty on economic, social and cultural collaboration and collective self-defence. The event took place in the same reception rooms where, on 23 October 1954, a series of treaties and agreements were signed which shaped the West’s future security system and of which the Protocol modifying the Brussels Treaty was a crucial part.

The modified Brussels Treaty created the Assembly of WEU. Providing national parliamentarians with consultative rights concerning all aspects of intergovernmental cooperation in security and defence matters was an important innovation at the time. In fact, Article IX of the modified Brussels Treaty, the article establishing the Assembly, took up an idea inherent in the European Defence Community (EDC) in order to ensure that intergovernmental cooperation had the necessary democratic legitimacy.

In his address to parliamentarians and ambassadors of the 28 WEU nations, Minister Barnier said it was the “avant-garde” activities of WEU which had allowed ESDP to build on its vast experience. Without the preparatory work of WEU, ESDP would not be making progress so quickly.

The Minister also said that it was necessary for the Assembly to continue its very valuable work and that once the European Constitutional Treaty had been ratified, the future procedures for interparliamentary scrutiny “should make lasting use of the Assembly’s acquis and experience”.

Assembly President Marcel Glesener (Luxembourg, Federated Group) thanked Michel Barnier in particular for his contribution in shaping the relevant security and defence chapters of the Constitutional Treaty as a member of the Convention Praesidium and as Chairman of its Defence Working Group. The Constitutional Treaty would provide guidelines for decision-makers and contained a number of innovative instruments necessary to respond to future security challenges.

President Glesener added that careful thought should be given to the question of whether the new instruments, once ratified, would make those that already existed obsolete or not. He stressed that the Assembly was the only forum in which national parliamentarians could collectively take part in an institutional dialogue with the governments on European security and defence policy.

President Glesener presented Minister Barnier with a copy of the new bilingual edition of the modified Brussels Treaty published by the Assembly as a miniature book.

(If you would like a copy of the miniature book, please contact the Assembly’s press service)