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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am contending that no obligation is intended. As I said, the legal experts group has come to that conclusion. Also, in the summing up at the General Affairs Council towards the end of last year, the presidency made it clear, and it was agreed by all member states, that there was no compulsion. In a letter to the Foreign Secretary on 16 October the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs of Portugal, which fulfilled the role of presidency, stated that"““the Legal Experts reached the conclusion, by consensus, that this article imposes no obligation on the national Parliaments and it is purely declaratory in nature.””" The House of Lords European Union Committee commented on the revised text in its report of 1 November 2007, which stated:"““While we accepted these reassurances””—" that the treaty was not intended to impose obligations on national Parliaments —"““we considered it necessary to ensure that the phraseology was correct while the interests of national parliaments were appropriately presented in the text. . . We were accordingly pleased to have heard that the word 'shall' has been eliminated from the English text.””"