ABSTRACT
In the first few years of the 21st century, the EU has continued to develop at remarkable speed. 2004 stood out in particular as a year in which important decisions were taken which may be regarded as historic. While the formal – or officially sanctioned – debate about a European constitution began only after the Nice European Council in 2000, partially as a response to perceptions of failure given the limited decisions taken at that summit, the wider process of constitutionalisation has been going on for a long time. The supranational institutions of the Commission, Parliament and, in particular, the Court of Justice all contributed to the formalisation of this process of polity-building. The Constitutional Treaty was eventually agreed by governments in June 2004, after a previous attempt to conclude the Intergovernmental Conference in December 2003 had failed. The process of seeking to achieve territorial integration came relatively late to the European project.
