The New Treaty on European Union: a First Assessment

European), a failure (L’Echo), a betrayer of ambitions (De Standaard), a result that nobody wanted (Libération), a wound leaving Europe disabled (Le Soir). In such a mood one would be eager hastily to throw away in the stream the failing EU and its unfinished Treaty. However, this would amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Wisdom does not advise anybody to do so but rather to compare how clean the baby has become even though he still has a foot in the stream. Therefore, this text distances itself on purpose from the heated debate in order to compare the European Community – i.e. the First Pillar of the European Union – before and after Amsterdam. After Amsterdam, one might easily be induced to think that EU Member States should have better obeyed an American proverb instructing us never to swap horses when crossing a stream. Indeed, whereas the main stream the IGC had been requested to cross was the adaptation of the EU institutions for the next enlargement, Member States put forward too many conditions or ‘swaps’ for both their representation and their capacity to act in the institutions of an enlarged European Union. The resulting failure to agree and the drowning of the necessary institutional reforms has focused the attention of a large part of the European Press. ‘Amsterdam’ has been judged a can of worms, a shamble and an irrelevance for Europe’s needs (the A Contemplative View on the First Pillar of the New European Union