Written question asked by John Hayes (Conservative) on Wednesday, 8 December 2004, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 20 December 2004. It was answered by Denis MacShane (Labour) on Monday, 20 December 2004 on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will list changes to the English text of the European Constitution that have occurred since the Intergovernmental Conference, broken down by article.

Answer: Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list changes to the English text of the European Constitution that have occurred since the Intergovernmental Conference, broken down by article. [204215] Mr. MacShane: Following the June Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), the draft EU Constitutional Treaty (Command Paper 6289) was consolidated into a single document and drawn up in all the authentic EU languages. These different versions were scrutinised by specialist lawyer linguists, as occurs for every EU Treaty, to ensure there were no discrepancies between the different language versions without making any substantive changes to the text adopted at the IGC. The final text was published as Command Paper 6429. Listing such discrepancies by article would incur disproportionate cost.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 204215; 428 c1397W;428 c1397-8W
Session: 2004-05
Subjects: Constitutions Documents European Union Languages European Constitution Treaty English language Treaties
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk