So who hasn't ratified the Treaty?

Well we know that the Poles haven't ratified, and neither have the Czechs. Then of course the Germans are waiting for everybody else before they deal with their own Constitutional Court judgement.

Well I was out this afternoon at the Open Europe demo against the Treaty, when I was bearded by a couple of Belgians and they had a strange story to tell.

From what they told me Belgian hasn't ratified the Treaty either. You see the King signed the Treaty back in July and documents were deposited in Rome in October. But what documents? There was a promise to put copies on the official moniter of Belgium. (A little like the Official Journal of the EU). This hasn't happened, because there is a traditional Belgian row going on.

According to the Belgian constitution, each ofthe regional Parliaments are part of the federal parliament. Therefore they will have the right to complain about EU legislation if they think it contravenes subsidiarity. Naturally the Flemish and the Walloon parliament have not seen eye to eye about the precise details. But the debate in the Belgian federal Parliament about the Treaty was so curtailed by the political chaos in Belgium that this kink was not ironed out.

Thus what was deposited in Rome was not the ratified Treaty, but instead some rather bureacratic IOU saying that the Belgians have every intention of tratifying the Treaty.

Now I hear there is to be a legal challenge launched to clarify the situation.