INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE: PRESIDENCY SEEKS TO SPEED UP INSTITUTIONAL NEGOTIATIONS.

• Position: Brief Article

Foreign Ministers will hold their IGC session on October 13 in Luxembourg and not October 14 as previously scheduled and announced. The session will be extended by a working dinner designed to prepare the IGC at the level of Heads of State and Government on October 16 in Brussels, in the morning, over lunch and over dinner. The agenda for work has been partially disrupted in order to anticipate discussions on institutional considerations, which were originally not scheduled to be launched before the end of October. Conversely, Ministers will, not resume their debate on the legislative Council, specialised Council configurations and the Presidency of these specialised Councils in the light of documents which General Affairs Council President-in-Office Franco Frattini had promised on the launch of the IGC on October 4, but which will not finally be ready before the week beginning October 20.

The Presidency has sown some measure of realism by...