| For a long time, there had been no mention of EU treaty change. And then, all of a sudden… Firstly, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen raised the topic in her State of the Union speech on 13 September. To reform the EU and make it better, she said, that means going through a European Convention and treaty change if and where it is needed. A few days later, a Franco-German report, commissioned by both governments on how best to reform the EU and prepare it for the accession of future members, was made public. The reform it envisages clearly requires treaty change. It is widely assumed that changing the EU treaties – after the painful ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which took two years to complete – is considered “mission impossible”. Even if EU leaders were able to agree to a set of changes, this would need to pass the ratification in national parliaments and, in some cases, the daunting test of referendums. The Franco-German report essentially proposes that member states agree that some of them would be officially relegated to second-class members. It proposes that the EU could move forward in four circles: 1. The inner circle; 2. The EU itself; 3. Associate members; 4. The European Political Community. The “inner circle” is composed of the members of the eurozone and Schengen. Today, some members of Schengen, namely the Netherlands and Austria, are keeping at bay Romania and Bulgaria, effectively preventing them from joining the “inner circle” club. That could become permanent. | 