In the title we drop the adjective 'legal' which does not work as well as 'juridique' in French, rather begging the question about the Union's use of non-legal acts.

In Article 24.1 and throughout we drop the adjective 'European'. What else could they be? Its appearance is superfluous and its repetition irritating.

We re-introduce the concept of organic law, supported by many in the Working Group on Simplification, for quasi-constitutional matters that could shift the balance of power between the institutions, among the member states or between the institutions and the member states. They are a useful form of very hard law for particularly solemn matters, such as the financial perspective of the Union or the uniform electoral procedure.

The method of deciding organic laws will be enhanced QMV procedures in both the Council and Parliament (see Article 25).

We introduce here the concept of delegated law (an improvement in nomenclature to the delegated 'regulation' or 'act'- in the Praesidium's CONV 571/03 both terms are used! - which we find muddling. It would be better to be more precise that what we mean here is secondary legislation that flows from primary legislation, a concept which is perfectly well understood in the constitutional traditions of most member states.

1 bis. The juridical but non-legislative acts of the Union - that is, the executive acts - deserve a paragraph to themselves in order to accentuate the distinction we are trying to make throughout the Constitution between the legislative and executive.

We propose a change of title because this Article is about the legislative procedure and not the legislative acts.

25.1 To aid comprehension we propose that the Constitution reminds everyone here that the Union has a legislature which is made up of the Council and the Parliament.

To effect the constitutional delimitation of legislative and executive action there is a need to define what is 'legislative' and what is 'executive'. The definition of 'legislation' in the Constitution would impose a substantive requirement on the Union. If the 'legislation' did not appear to be legitimated by procedural and/or substantive requirements, it would be open to challenge in the Court of Justice.

25.1 bis. The details of the codecision procedure are essential elements of the Constitution. It is preferable therefore to give them maximum visibility by placing them in Part One. We reproduce the essence of Article 251 TEC (the codecision procedure) in a revised, and one hopes, clearer and shorter form.

The special thresholds for organic laws are also provided for.

25.2 There is an important point of principle here which should be made explicit. Nothing should become law that is not passed both by the Council and by the Parliament. Only the legislature shall exercise legislative power. The Praesidium's Article 25.2 offends that principle as it allows the Council to legislate independently of the Parliament. What is the justification for this?

25.3 The injunction to openness would be strengthened by a reference to the publication of the Council's verbatim proceedings.

The article should be renamed. As the accompanying explanation recognises, "non-legislative acts are adopted by the two institutions exercising executive powers ...". For the sake of clarity all reference to 'non-legislative' should be replaced by 'executive'.

This article should follow the subsequent one not precede it. It concerns non-legislative acts which are the subject of Article 28, not 27 (see footnote).

It should be the Council or the Commission. 'And' implies a joint action, which is not presumably intended.

The Praesidium seems confused. We are not talking here of secondary legislation but of implementing acts.

The Praesidium's choice of the term 'delegated regulation' here only serves to confuse the reader with the regulation of an executive type that is provided for in Article 24. That is why we change the title. The term 'regulation' should be used both sparingly and specifically.

27.1 This category of delegated act is secondary legislation, a readily understood concept. Why not say so?

The purpose of delegated law is to expand on the primary law in terms of specificity, modify the fields of application of existing law or adapt existing law to meet new conditions, for example by revising regulatory norms.

Curiously, the Praesidium's formulation only allows for the call-back of a delegated law to be one of the possibilities that could be explicitly determined in the primary law. The possibility of revocation should be systematic and not optional.

The sunset clause is, however, retained as an option in 27.3. It cannot always be appropriate to limit the duration of secondary legislation, and may lead to serious legal lacunae.

In Article 28.2 we remove the reference to (unspecified) 'specific cases'. It is the Commission and not the Council that has executive power to implement acts at the Union level. The extension of codecision to all law-making renders null and void the (even today) exceptional power of the Council to grant itself implementing powers.

Discretionary powers must be restricted to the Union institutions themselves. Nevertheless, it would be useful to make explicit the basic principles of the ECJ's case law on the delegation of executive powers as found in Meroni.

In Article 28.3, therefore, we suppress the bizarre reference to future 'control mechanisms' and spell out precisely what the Commission needs to do to bring greater efficiency, effectiveness and transparency to the implementation of the Union's law and policy.

If the Convention were to fail to reform the comitology procedures it will have failed comprehensively.

It is unnecessary to have special provision for instruments in police and criminal justice policy.

The special procedures are foreseen in Article 25.1.

In the title, the use of the phrase governing is more accurate than 'common'.

This additional proposal stems from the current work of the institutions on better regulation. The obligation placed on governments to set out their intentions with respect to the transposition of EU law into their domestic jurisdiction will assist scrutiny of the measure by national parliaments and comprehension by regional and local authorities and the social partners.

It may also encourage member state governments to share best practice.

This Article may be better placed in Part Two.

In Article 33.1 we propose the use of the generic term 'legislation' in order to help the Praesidium with its drafting.

We have also removed the reference to the solitary signature of the President of the Council in legislative matters which is redundant.

In Article 33.2 we provide for an appropriate methodology for the promulgation of decisions and regulations.