Misplaced Pages

The Guardian: "But Britain will take legal action if the eurozone, or a eurozone country such as France, attempts to use EU institutions to re-write the rules of the single market as part of the enforcement of the fiscal compact." - SSJ  23:21, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support, but to European fiscal compact. Mtking 00:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• IMO it's unnecessary to add "European" in the title. As the google search result shown above indicates, a disambiguation isn't needed. Especially since there isn't any existing article named "Fiscal compact". - SSJ  00:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• This treaty doesn't create a new union. The existing EU institutions will be used, and according to Article 15, the deal will be folded into the EU's legal framework within 5 years. The focus is on the deal itself. "European Fiscal Union" is not a commonly used term (it smells crystal balling IMO) and seems unfounded; "The fiscal compact" is on the other hand a well-established term for this deal. I think this article should be named after the treaty; i.e. the short form "Fiscal Compact", and have a treaty infobox. This is about an intergovernmental deal; a new union within the union is not on the table. - SSJ  00:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:RECENTISM. Fiscal mess in EU happens to be a recent and quite big topic of discussion. That term is being bandied about lately in the European press WP:BIAS is unsurprising. But that's not an excuse to steal conventional terms. WP:WORLDVIEW Walrasiad (talk) 03:54, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide a few examples of the use of this term in a non-EU context? I don't find it on e.g. dictionary.com, and as I've said, a Google search clearly indicates that this is not very common outside the context of this new treaty. - SSJ  17:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• How about a little more precision with European Union fiscal compact? Brightgalrs (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/) 05:14, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

@Brightgalrs, I would find that, or something like that, acceptable. Walrasiad (talk) 06:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

If anything, "Fiscal compact (European Union)" would be more sensible, as "European Union fiscal compact" isn't the name of anything (besides, this doesn't involve all of the EU). But as I've said, I don't see the need for disambiguation as there's no other article competing for this article name. - SSJ  17:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – the name of the article should be Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, ie the official name. However the treaty has not been finalised yet, so it would be better to wait the official sign of the treaty scheduled for March 2012.--Insilvis (talk) 13:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

  The formal name of the treaty is IMO much too long, and isn't commonly used. "Fiscal Compact" is commonly used, and should therefore be the name of this article. That would be in line with the naming convention on Misplaced Pages. Note that the name is capitalised, something which clearly indicates that this isn't the EU "highjacking" a good old term (if it is a term older than a year, something I haven't seen evidence to suggest), but rather the proper noun of one treaty. - SSJ  17:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

This would go against both WP:COMMONNAME and our own naming conventions. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 17:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Title 3 (the main chunk with the rules) of the treaty is named "FISCAL COMPACT". Does anyone have a traditional definition of "fiscal compact"? If not, then I don't see how the articles stating that Draghi coined the term are wrong. Not that the existence of a conventional definition would be a reason for this article not to have "Fiscal Compact" as its name. - SSJ  18:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – Shortened: Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance --Insilvis (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The formal name mentions the monetary and economic union, and that's the whole point. I don't think this shortened name is a good idea. German Misplaced Pages calls it "Europäischer Fiskalpakt" i.e. the European Fiscal Pact (though I reckon "(fiscal) compact" is only used in English). If "Fiscal Compact" (clearly the most common name for the treaty, used by official websites, the media and senior politicians alike) doesn't turn out to be the consensus in this discussion, then my second proposal is "European Fiscal Pact". It's a name that's certainly more relevant than the crystal-balling and misleading current name of the article: European Fiscal Union. - SSJ  02:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

But it's still a made-up title. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 18:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure. - SSJ  18:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support move to Fiscal Compact or European Fiscal Compact. See my comments above and in following sub-section.. --Boson (talk) 22:25, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose for now: I am keen to reconsider, but only after the treaty will be signed.
  POST SCRIPTUM: what about Fiscal Compact Treaty? --Insilvis (talk) 11:37, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
• Stong support for move (several good options available), the "Union" in the title is overstating what this treaty is, and we should not use it unless it becomse the common name to refer to it; or if the formal name changes to this. I am reletively flexible as far as the move possibities are concerned. I like "European Fiscal Compact" as clear and to the point and correct, or "Fiscal Compact Treaty" (as even more neutral: it just says there is a treaty about it; and does not leave the suggestion of synthesis in the title in defining what excactly it estabishes in practice. L.tak (talk) 12:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

The inevitable conclusion

1. The common name for an article about this treaty is "Fiscal Compact", not "European Fiscal Compact", "EU Fiscal Compact", "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance", and "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union". The first three are just names made-up by Misplaced Pages editors. The last is a rarely used proposed official name of a treaty which hasn't even been signed yet.

2. There has never been a rule on Misplaced Pages that just because a name sounds generic that it can't be used as an article title for a non-generic subject. See for example Ordinary referendum or Minister for Labour. The rules is just that if there are two articles with the same name, we use disambiguation tags on one or both of their page names.

3. If someone wishes to create a generic article concerning fiscal compacts please do so. When that occurs we can argue about which gets to be at "Fiscal Compact/Fiscal compact". Otherwise it's entirely unnecessary. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 18:32, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. - SSJ  18:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. And quite presumptuous. Quite in disregard of WP:WORLDVIEW and WP:RECENTISM. If this was 1999, I'd sure you'd be all over the place talking about how "monetary union" was a phrase exclusive to the European Monetary Union. You seek to abscond with a common phrase generically denoting common phenomenon that is not exclusively European nor related to this latest crisis nor invented by the EU. It is a phrase used for many situations, at many times, in many parts of the world. Exclude all European newspapers & media from your search and see how far you get without the "European" or "EU" or "Eurozone" disambiguator. Walrasiad (talk) 05:10, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I can't understand what all the fuss is about. "Pious baloney" (as recently coined by Romney) seems to be a good description for it all. European Fiscal Union is an excellent title, explaining the focus of the article and using a widely accepted term. As for the other suggestions, there is already clear mention of the European development in Fiscal union and, for the time being at least, Fiscal compact redirects here too. So let's just keep things the way they are. - Ipigott (talk) 09:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I do agree: the best option is to keep the title as it is now.

(Or, alternatively, modify it slightly into European Fiscal Pact)

--Insilvis (talk) 10:47, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

No the current name can't stand. The treaty doesn't propose creating a fiscal union. That would involve a European finance ministry with tax raising powers. There may well be an article to write about proposed European fiscal unions but this isn't it. Whatever complaints about world view and recentism can be overcome by moving the article to Fiscal Compact (European Union). — Blue-Haired Lawyer 13:14, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

If Barroso himself can talk about fiscal union, then the title seems perfectly adequate. See, for example, here. Maybe lower case would be slightly preferable but there is certainly no need to come up with a completely new formulation, especially as nothing has been ratified at this stage. - Ipigott (talk) 16:54, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Unless I have missed something, in that speech Barroso refers to

• "fiscal compact" 5 times
• "fiscal stability union" 1 time (together with "fiscal compact")
• "fiscal union" 0 times

Here are the quotes:

• And indeed, during Thursday night an agreement was reached to create a genuine "fiscal stability union", a new "fiscal compact".
• Let me now move on to the key elements of the new fiscal compact.
• Personally, I made every possible effort to agree this fiscal compact fully within the current treaties.
• I intend to make full use of Article 136, by proposing to this House all the legislation that will be needed, to make this construction work, to tie this fiscal compact back to EU law, and to buttress it with the democratic legitimacy of this Parliament.
• It is indeed very important that member states agreed a fiscal compact, but let me say that this is not enough.

--Boson (talk) 17:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree, the current name cannot stand as the title for an article about this treaty. "Fiscal union" is something different. I am also not happy about using Czech and Russian sources to justify the statement that it has been described (even erroneously) as a fiscal union.--Boson (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Rename but to Eurozone fiscal compact or possibly European fiscal compact. This will not apply to the whole European Union, only to 25 of the 27 members. It will not be a European Union treaty. On the other hand, we may need to rename it again when it is actaully singed nand ratified, so that it may be better to await events. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:11, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

EU six pack

Very important legislative package entered into force in already in 2011. I don't see this mentioned here or in another article, so maybe a EU Economic governance "Six-Pack" should be created. See also here.

Actually, the EU six pack (and the expected additional EU regulations for Commission oversight of eurozone national budgets) constitute more of a "fiscal union" than the "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union" that only slightly tweaks the already existing debt/deficit rules. Japinderum (talk) 10:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you looking for Sixpack (EU)? I added it to the "see also" section. --spitzl (talk) 18:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Good, thanks! Japinderum (talk) 10:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Map: Slovenia

In the map:

http://en.wikipedia.org/File:European_Fiscal_Compact.svg

Slovenia is not part of the eurozone.

Nevertheless, Slovenia is part of the eurozone.

Cheers. --Insilvis (talk) 11:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanx for pointing out. --spitzl (talk) 15:34, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Name

Shouldn't this be at Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance? —Nightstallion 15:05, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Not if you consider Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Common names (and Misplaced Pages:Official names). --RJFF (talk) 15:39, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

The Map

The current map includes Spanish and Portuguese islands but excludes lots of French islands which also also form part of the eurozone. If the map has any purpose at all it's to show which countries are taking part in the Fiscal Compact, not to give geography lessons. We're hardly going to include a map like the one at Special member state territories and the European Union.

Image:European Fiscal Compact.svg is better because its more compact and doesn't require an infobox which is 400 pixels wide. And a quarter of it isn't taken up by the Atlantic Ocean. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 11:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't Corsica have the same color as France? Ambi Valent (talk) 18:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Clearly! It should be fixed now. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 21:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Deposited or Ratification ???

A department in the European Parliament every third week publish a status over the Fiscal Compact ratification process. They define the fiscal compact to be "completely ratified" once it has been:

1. Approved (by a completed parliamentary procedure by all houses).
2. Signed by the Head of State.
3. Published in the Official Journal.

I now wonder why this definition about "complete ratification", apparently is not equal to the term "deposited", and not good enough to deserve being coloured "dark green"? And I also wonder: What is causing the delay between being "completely ratified" and "deposited"? Danish Expert (talk) 21:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

The ratification procedure consists of two parts: one internal and one external. The internal procedure consists of a parliamentary procedure, usually including the adoption of a law authorising ratification, and then the ratification by the Head of State by signing and promulgating the ratification instruments. The internal ratification procedure is governed by the constitutional provisions of the concerned state. The external procedure consists of the ratification instruments (from the internal process) being submitted to the depositer. The external ratification procedure is governed by international law (Vienna Convention etc) and the provisions of the concerned Act. The external ratification process is only a formality. However, from a legal point of view, the ratification procedure is not completed until the ratification instruments have been submitted to the depositer. Sometimes the external procedure is completed during a day, sometimes it can take months. --Glentamara (talk) 21:53, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Aha. Thanks for the great reply. As it is the "deposited" day regulating the legal matters, I of course now fully support the idea, only to colour the lines "dark green" in the wikitable, once this hurdle also has been passed. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 22:01, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes it is more than a formality too. Ireland, for instance, completed the ratification of the European Stability Mechanism with presidential assent on July 3 but this was challenged in the courts and they could not deposit the instruments of ratification until the court case was resolved. Had the court found the ESM violated the constitution, the instruments of ratification would never have been deposited and Ireland wouldn't have become a member to the treaty. TDL (talk) 22:07, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. It is not until the ratification instruments have been deposited, a Treaty (or other international agreement) can be legally binding for the concerned State. --Glentamara (talk) 22:19, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Sub-note about expected deposited dates

The 7 nations so far having deposited, used in average 23 days to deposit, after having completed their political approval of the ratification with a presidential/royal assent. To be exact, the following amount of days were used: Austria=13, Cyprus=27, Greece=43, Portugal=8, Slovenia=30, Denmark=31, Latvia=9. In regards of the upcomming next deposits, its interesting to note that the following 5 countries have been standing in the waiting room since these dates (where they completed the political approval with presidential/royal assent):

• Romania (13 June)
• Ireland (27 June)
• Lithuania (4 July)
• Italy (23 July)
• Spain (25 July)

In regards of our article's wikitable with the ratification status displayed, we are only using the green colour for nations who deposited. I predict minimum 3 out of the 5 countries mentioned above, will be coloured green before the end of September. Danish Expert (talk) 00:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Speaking about Ireland, the listing of the date 28 June as the "ratification approval" of the Irish Parliament, however appear to be a mistake by the European Parliament's Legislative Dialogue Unit. As the thing that got ratified by that date, "only" was the amendment change of the Irisih constitution allowing for the Irish Parliament to ratify the "Fiscal Compact" after passing the votes in both chambers. After the referendum approval 31 May 2012, I expect it will only be a matter of formality for the Irish Parliament to complete their ratification of the "Fiscal Compact". But apparently the ratification has been attached together with the parliaments approval of the needed new "budget rule law", which contain much more details for the parliament to debate and consider (and this process will only start in the second half of September). The Irish ratification will therefore now at the earliest be completed in November 2012, and in my opinion it is more likely only to get completed around December 2012. Danish Expert (talk) 08:46, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I also today found an insteresting map published by the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), which made the prediction that the slowest 2 out of 25 signatories to ratify will be Netherlands + Belgium, with an expected ratification date by December 2012. If the treaty shall enter into force already 1 Nov. / 1 Dec. (ahead of the target date: 1 January 2013), it will thus require that minimum 12 of the other remaining 15 eurozone members can manage to complete their ratification ahead of respectively 1 Nov. / 1 Dec. Danish Expert (talk) 08:46, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Among the 17 eurozone countries, we currently (as of 28 September 2012) already had 8 of the eurozone countries with a completed ratification. While the remaining eurozone countries are now likely to complete their ratification with a deposit in the following months:

• November = Estonia+France+Malta.
• December = Ireland+Luxembourg+Slovakia+Finland.
• January = Belgium (as their ratification process only is scheduled to start 9 October 2012, and because it needs to walk through 7-9 parliaments).
• ?????? = Netherlands (due to a parliamentary election in September 2012, and apparently only a reluctant support for a timely ratification after the election).

Bottom line is, that the treaty will indeed soon enter into force. But as the 12th eurozone member is expected only to deposit in December 2012, it will NOT enter into force before on the target date: 1 January 2013. Danish Expert (talk) 22:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Two months after I posted my prediction above, we only have 9 eurozone countries with a deposit. Here is a new updated outlook for when the remaining eurozone countries will deposit their ratification of the Fiscal Compact:

• December = Estonia + Ireland.
• January = Slovakia + Finland + Malta.
• February = Luxembourg + Netherlands.
• March = Belgium.

All in all, it is no longer likely that the 12th eurozone country will deposit in December 2012 (as originally aimed for in the treaty). Instead this is now expected only to happen in January 2013, simply because the average time used by EU countries to deposit after presidential assent is equal to 1 month. To be honest I feel a bit embarassed, that the required 2/3 of the eurozone states were not able to complete ratification within 10 months after sigining the treaty. In reality it however fortunately does not cause any delay in regards of the entry into force, as we now have a situation where the treaty retrospectively will enter into force on: 1 January 2013.Danish Expert (talk) 13:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Time for a short christmas update. As of 21 December we now have 12 eurozone countries with a deposit, meaning it is now certain the treaty enter into force on 1 January 2013. It was Finland who supprised on a positive note, as they managed to deposit the same day as their preisdent gave his assent. Here is a new updated outlook for when the remaining eurozone countries (BeNeLux + Malta + Slovakia) will deposit their ratification of the Fiscal Compact (please note it is only a forecast - and can change if new info arrives):

• January = Slovakia
• February = Luxembourg + Netherlands.
• March = Belgium.
• April = Malta (due to parliament being dissolved 10 December, and early elections first called to take place: 7 March 2013)

Danish Expert (talk) 23:57, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Ireland

Neither of the presidential assents previously listed under Ireland referred to him signing the treaty. I don't know if the president ever signs instruments of ratification. The first assent was his signing of the referendum bill. The amendment is only effective when it is signed.

The second would be when the president signs the statute implementing the treaty, the Fiscal Responsibility Bill. Arguably the government could ratify the Fiscal Compact now and enact the bill later.

Maybe the better route would be to exclude details of the Bill but included the Dail resolution required to approve treaties involving a charge on public funds required by Article 29.5.2°. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 10:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Most countries -if not all- have chosen a 2-step route. First the Parliament system and constitutional system only ratifies the Treaty itself, by confirming the assent made by their Prime Minister at 2 March was fully valid. Second the Parliament system will start the work to enact the national law implementing the Treaty, whith a final deadline for the implementation regulated by the Treaty to be: 1 year after the Treaty enters into force. Danish Expert (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to listing the presidential assent of the constitutional amendment, my only concerns is with consistency and clarity. It doesn't make much sense to list the presidential assent but not the Dáil and Seanad approval of the constitutional amendment. Also, it should be clearer that this is what was approved. TDL (talk) 11:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I share the concern of TDL. Thus I just updated the table with a compromise, with the words "of referendum" noted in a small parenthesis behind the first presidential assent. As far as I know, Ireland will now soon start an ordinary ratification procedure of the Treaty, after the constituion has been changed to allow for the ratification process to start. So I expect both Dail+Seanad+President now to soon ratify the Treaty itself, and hope they will not bundle the ratification together with the bill implementing the treaty, as that would considerably slow the ratification speed. Danish Expert (talk) 12:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Bailout?

The article refers to the emergency loans by the EU as a bailout, and links to the "bailout" wikipage. Which is pretty one-sided in declaring bailouts are evil, that Ron Galt said they're evil, and did I mention they are evil? Most important though, what's talked about there is business bailouts. State bailouts (whatever they're called) are different, since when a business goes insolvent and is not saved, it will disappear, and its workforce have to find work elsewhere, and then (as proponents say) the situation improves again. Meanwhile, unless you advocate territorial annexation or mass migration, a state may go insolvent, but still remains in place - there's only the alternative between having to go through reform either when insolvent or earlier during a bailout.

So I think either the EU emergency loans should be referred to by a name other than "bailout" or the links should go to a different page, or nowhere at all. Ambi Valent (talk) 18:59, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I am fine with that. Be bold. --spitzl (talk) 12:55, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Just removed the link. I agree it would be appropriate for wikipedia to have two seperate articles explaining the concepts of a "business bailout" and "bailout of souverign states", respectively. Danish Expert (talk) 13:01, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Fiscal compliance

This is just to bump a short note and share my current thoughts and ideas, in regards of the recently added "Fiscal compliance" table. Beside of informing readers about "Fiscal compliance" for the first Fiscal Compact year in 2013 (supplemented by info on "EDP adjustment deadlines" and the initiated "aid/correction from bailout programs"), I also currently have an idea eventually to add a subchapter named: "Old data and the corrective EDP mechanism". My thought and idea is, that it could be interesting to preserve the table and its fiscal data as of August 2012. So when the European Commission publish its next Economic forecast report on 15 November 2012 (with data reflecting the result of the final fiscal budget laws for 2013), we shall plot this data into a new comparable table in the main chapter, and place the table with the old data in a subchapter named "Old data and the Corrective EDP mechanism". My idea is, that this could provide the basis of a "first hand" impression, in regards of how well the "corrective EDP mechanism" worked in 2012; measured by how many red lines it succeeded to convert to green lines going from the "forecasted 2013-data as of May 2012" into the "forecasted 2013-data as of November 2012" (being revised mainly by the newly signed 2013 fiscal budget laws in each country). Danish Expert (talk) 08:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it could also be interesting finally to repeat this way of posting the 2014-data, at the time when the European Commission publish their fresh forecast in May+November 2013. This would then provide another "first hand" impression, in regards of how well the "NEW corrective EDP mechanism" (introduced by the Fiscal Compact) worked in 2013; measured by how many red lines it succeeded to convert to green lines going from the "forecasted 2014-data as of May 2013" into the "forecasted 2014-data as of November 2013" (being revised mainly by the newly implemented 2014 fiscal budget laws in each country). Danish Expert (talk) 08:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

After a second thought, I start to get less hot on my idea above. Problem is, that we unfortunately in many cases have too many factors having an impact on the forecasted structural deficits. The first and biggest problem is, that the Nov.2012 forecast does not include the improvements by those drafted "fiscal budget laws for 2013", that havent yet been approved by Parliaments upon the time of conducting the forecast. So we have a bit of a mess, and if we attempt to do an "improvement comparison" we should also note which country forecasts are based upon "old policy" and which country forecasts are based upon a "newly approved fiscal budget for 2013". I am afraid this will spoil my idea to conduct the "improvement comparison" for all countries. Another caveat for some countries, is that even the figure for "structural deficits" contain some volatile components. In example, it is well-known that Denmark in 2010+2011 delivered an unexpected improvement of its structural deficit, due to some big increases of the 2 very volatile revenue items: "Pension yield tax" and "North Sea oil revenues". So while our Danish EDP program deliver deficit impovements on 1.5% of GDP walking from 2011 to 2013, it should be noted our actual structural deficit at the same time also got further improved by an unexpected/unforecasted 2.4% of GDP in 2010 and again 2.2% of GDP in 2011. To be honest, I wonder if this could happen again for Denmark in both 2012+2013, as it seems like the EC forecasts continue to underestimate those two revenue components. Another source of error is, that a part of the improvements on structural deficits during the course of the year, are not always related to some new and immedeately implemented fiscal policy changes, but can also be caused by earlier succesfull reform decisions made a couple of years earlier, with a "hidden" positive impact now occuring a bit ahead of time or at a bigger scale, compared to the initial forecast/expectation. So fiscal improvements in one year, could in many times also be due to good reform decisions made some further years back, and this further complicates our attempt to figure out in what specific year the "corrective EDP mechanism" started to work perfect. To say it short: It will in most cases provide some misleading info, if we directly link any visible "improved compliance of the recently forecasted figures for the upcomming year", together with a judgement of how good we think the "corrective mechanism" actually worked at that particulair point of time. So after a second concideration, I now think it is better to drop the idea of showing both the "May forecast" and "Nov forecast" for 2013, and I will also drop the ambitious idea to evaluate the "corrective mechanism" by doing a direct comparison of the improvements gained. I now feel more like, that we instead just should limit ourself only to include one table in the article with the most recently forecasted figures for 2013. Danish Expert (talk) 11:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think another whole table would be too much, I'd limit it to one column comparing structural deficit numbers (current and pre-compact). I'd also like a third color (yellow probably) for the countries that satisfy the conditions of the SGP but not the fiscal compact. That would be Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, Poland, Czech Republic and maybe Hungary (its debt is over 60% but declining, Germany and Italy with higher declining debts were counted as complying). Addendum: Maybe blue for the Czech Republic because it's SGP-compliant and hasn't signed the compact. Ambi Valent (talk) 08:28, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Changed the table so that states that comply to the Stability and Growth Pact are shown in yellow. I assumed compliance is given if deficit ratio is at most 3.0% and debt ratio is either at most 60% or, if higher, falling. Ambi Valent (talk) 07:11, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Majority needed for ratification

I just expanded the wikitable with an extra coloumn entitled: "Majority needed for ratification". Data was extracted from two EU reports that monitors the ratification process. But unfortunately the data from the two reports in a few cases disagreed or was incorrect. Most countries had the need for majority evaluated by a national "Legal council" or "Council of State" ahead of the parliamentary process, and those reports are of course recommended to check if you want to know for sure if the data in the wikitable is correct. Due to time constraints I have not looked up the evaluation made by all those reports. This note is just to highlight, that you should only consider the "majority needed" data in the wikitable (based mainly on the two EU reports), as being correct in 90% of the times. Danish Expert (talk) 22:11, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Belgian ratification

All of the 7 legislative Belgian parliaments need to pass the bill with simple majority. When looking at the Ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, this might however result in more than 7 votes. The additional possible votes is comprised of 2 supplemental votes in the Wallonian and Flemish parliament for the regulation of "community matters" (that if needed will be cast at the same time when the parliament votes for the "regional matters"), and 3 sub-community votes in the Brussels region (Brussels United Assembly, COCOF Assembly, VGC Assembly). For the moment I expect the 5 additional votes will not be needed to ratify the Fiscal Compact, so that is why I removed them from the wikitable. If I am wrong, you can copy the old lines from this archived article page. Danish Expert (talk) 12:01, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Wide tables

Some tables on that page were quite wide. I made them more compact to avoid need for scrolling. The page now renders fine on a 980 screen. ChemTerm (talk) 17:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Autumn 2012 forecast

The autumn 2012 forecast for 2013 (and even 2014) is already out: http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/european_economy/2012/pdf/ee-2012-7_en.pdf Hope that helps.Ambi Valent (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help to update the table. I think it is indeed interesting to see how numbers changed from May to November, and can not help to publish a short list here at the talk page with the biggest changes (measured by structural deficits):

* Greece improved 5.2% (and will now have a surplus on 0.7%, being a true historical achievement as the last time the country had a surplus was back in 1973)

* Cyprus worsened 3.1% (and will now have a deficit on 4.8%)

* Slovakia improved 1.4% (and will now have a deficit on 3.2%)

* Netherlands improved 1.4% (and will now have a deficit on 1.1%)

* Portugal worsened 1.2% (and will now have a deficit on 2.5%)

* France improved 0.9% (and will now have a deficit on 2.0%)

* Czech Republic worsened 0.8% (and will now have a deficit on 2.6%)

* Spain improved 0.8% (and will now have a deficit on 4.0%)

Perhaps as expected, the results have so far been mixed. On a positive note the number of countries complying with the limit for strutural deficits already in 2013 grew from 7 to 9 (with Luxembourg and Greece being the two new countries on this positive list). On a negative note the 19 other EU countries will not comply in 2013. But as the treaty only require the new Automatic Correction Mechanisms to take national effect on 1 January 2014, this was also somewhat expected. In addition we also have a small hidden caveat in the wikitable with "Autumn figures", as it is important to keep in mind the forecasted data only reflect the recently passed "fiscal budget 2013" law for 50% of the countries, while the remaining 50% did not yet pass their "fiscal budget 2013" law ahead of the forecast on 7 November. Only when the next Economic Winter Forecast report will be released on 7 February 2013, we will have all passed "fiscal budget 2013" laws reflected by the figures. So some of the countries still have a chance to improve their figures. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 10:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

For the purpose of comparing how the 2013 debt figures changed from the May forecast to the November forecast, here you also have a list with all the noted debt-to-GDP changes bigger than 3%:

* Greece worsened 20.4% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 188.4%)

* Cyprus worsened 18.6% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 96.7%)

* Portugal worsened 6.4% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 123.5%)

* Italy worsened 5.8% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 127.6%)

* Spain worsened 5.7% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 92.7%)

* Netherlands improved 3.7% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 69.3%)

* Finland worsened 3.0% (and will now have a debt-to-GDP on 54.7%)

I think the list of the biggest changes in regards of structural deficits and debt-to-GDP figures are interesting to map here at the talk-page. At the same time I however also think it falls outside the scope of the article if we add and display all forecast tables into the compliance chapter. Thus I will now remove the "May forecast table", so that the chapter only display the most recent forecast table from November 2012. Danish Expert (talk) 11:34, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, we should only include the most recent data here. Older data might be relevant to some other article though. TDL (talk) 18:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

EDP deadlines will be prolonged for many of the Fiscal Compact ratifiers in March 2013

This is just to bump a short notice here at the talkpage, about the level of improvement we should expect for the fiscal figures in 2013 and 2014. If I had found a good valid source for it, then my notice would instead have been made at the bottom of the "Fiscal compliance" chapter in the article. But I couldn't find such a source -for now-, and the needed source will most likely only be written around next time when the European Commission and ECOFIN council evaluate all ongoing EDPs. A new round of evaluations will arrive on the basis of the next economic winter forecast to be published 7 February 2013, and with the Commission likely to submit their recommendation for renewed Council decisions in March 2013.

What we should keep in mind, is the concept of the EDPs. They basicly outline an "adjustment path" towards a calculated Medium-Term budgetarry Objective (MTO), that will ensure compliance with the "SGP limits"/"Fiscal Compact limits" for debt+deficit. The EDP itself, will then only be abrogated after the "fiscal year", where the country indeed will comply with the "SGP limits"/"Fiscal Compact limits". In the previous Commission+Council evaluation made in June+December 2012, the EDP deadlines were set according to when all EU member states should comply with the "SGP limits". But in the next March 2013 evaluation, the EDP deadlines for "Fiscal Compact ratifiers" will instead be set according to when the country shall comply with the "Fiscal Compact limits" (which with a max. 0.5% structural deficit limit is much more strict). Hence it is likely the EDP deadline will get prolonged for many of the "Fiscal Compact ratifiers" in March 2013.

Those EDP deadlines being prolonged will however (according to my own guess) most likely only get prolonged with 1 year. But nobody really knows, as it will likely also depend on how the general economic climate and outlook is for Europe in February 2013. Only thing we can know for sure, is that the 2011-reformed SGP rules (to which all EU members are committed) now require that the "adjustment path" needs to bring yearly improvements for the country's structural deficit, so that it delines minimum 0.5% per year for countries with debt levels below 60%, and declines with a "higher minimum pace" for countries with debt levels above 60% (being individually set -according to several country specific parameters).

My only point is, that our expectations for "structural deficit improvements" for the 21 EU Members still subject to ongoing EDPs in November 2012, should really only be based on my outlined points above, and not based on any false illusion/hope for the "Fiscal Compact" to ensure, that all ratifying countries will manage rapidly to comply with all "Fiscal Compact criteria" from the very moment when it enters into force. It will take longer than that, and we should not get dissapointed about the slow adjustment speed, as long as the figures continue to improve continously. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 12:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Outlook for Spain

The fiscal outlook for Spain will according to the latest debt sustainability analysis published by the European Commission in October 2012, if assuming the country will stick to the fiscal consolidation path and targets outlined by the country's current EDP programme, result in the debt-to-GDP ratio reaching its maximum at 110% in 2018 - followed by a declining trend in subsequent years. In regards of the structural deficit, the same outlook has promised it will gradually decline to comply with the maximum 0.5% level required by the Fiscal Compact in 2022/2027. So while the current Spanish EDP is scheduled to be abrogated in 2014 (when the budget deficit has been forecasted to decline below the 3%-limit), we can only expect that Spain will be able to comply with all fiscal rules in the Fiscal Compact in 2022/2027. Currently the European Commission will have two options. The first is only to publish "EDP deadlines" and then just delay the EDP deadlines for several Fiscal Compact ratifiers. Or the second option is to invent what we could call "Fiscal Compact deadlines" to exist along with the old "EDP deadlines". At the moment I am not 100% sure what the Commission will do. If anyone of you can find out, please post your findings here at the talkpage. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 10:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Why was the Malta EDP abrogated in December 2012?

On a sidenote to the EDP outlook, I can now inform you that the ECOFIN council decided yesterday to extend the Greek EDP from 2014 to 2016 and to abrogate the EDP for Malta. The following lines will only highlight the details about Malta, as this is an interesting border-line case to watch. In the autumn economic forecast (7 November), the Maltese deficit was found to comply with the 3% SGP limit in 2011+2012+2013+2014. In regards of the rule requiring a yearly 0.5% improvement for the "structural deficit", this was found NOT to be met in 2012+2013+2014. In regards of the rule that expenses are not allowed to increase more than GDP growth (unless specific income measures are implemented along to finance the excessive increase), this rule was also predicted to be breached in 2013. And finaly the rule that the debt-to-GDP ratio should be on a declining trajectory was likewise being breached both in 2011+2012+2013+2014. Despite of all these breaches, the Council decided in December 2012 to abrogate the EDP. The decision was reasoned by, that the early cut-off date (19 October 2012) for the Commision's latest economic forecast (published 7 November), had caused that the additional fiscal consolidation introduced by the "Fiscal budget 2013 law" for Malta, was not reflected by the forecast figures. Taking the additional fiscal consolidation into account, the Council decided it was all together sufficient enough to abrogate the EDP. I look forward to learn how the revised figures are for Malta, as they have not yet been published. Honestly I am baffled how both the Commission + Council can decide to abrogate the EDP before knowing the exact revised figures. I suspect they were presented some revised figures by the Maltese Finance Minister, but for the decision to be transparent and fair, they will IMHO need as a minimum to print the revised figures in their specific Council report dealing with the decision. When the Council report is uploaded (and if revised figures are included), I will of course FYI upload the figures here at the talkpage. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 13:25, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Ahead of publication of the Council report on abrogation of Malta EDP, my speculation also goes that the Council did not evaluate "improvements of structural deficits" year on year, but instead calculated the average for the yearly improvement for the period from the start of the EDP in 2009 until the "current year". The structural deficit for Malta was recorded to: 5.4% (2008), 3.7% (2009), 4.6% (2010), 3.5% (2011), 3.5% (2012), 3.2% (old forecast for 2013), 2.8% (old forecast for 2014). This mean that it declined in average 0.475% per year from 2008 until 2012. According to the EDP regulation (also confirmed by the EDP report to Malta in July 2009), the country is supposed to deliver yearly structural deficit improvements with a minimum size of 0.5% per year as long as having the ongoing EDP. With 0.475% per year since 2008 this is just on the borderline, but apparently good enough in the eyes of the Council. I still look forward to read the council report, but after looking into the fiscal figures, I am almost certain my speculation about the "average-calculation principle" will be prooved correct. Danish Expert (talk) 17:35, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

This is ridiculous!!! What is the point of having rules, if you from the inside of the organisation decide they should not be followed??? It doesn't make any sence, and with this stupid decision my last amount of faith in the European institutions have just vanished. The problem is, that both the Commission + ECOFIN council reasoned their decision to abrogate the Maltese EDP with the story that the new Malta budget law for 2013 had not been passed before the release of the forecast report, and taking the budget into account the figures were now acceptable for 2013. They however forgot to take one important issue into account: The Maltese parliament has not yet passed the 2013 budget!!! It will only be voted for on 10 December, and it is not even sure to pass, as their is a high risk for the government to loose the vote with a subsequent call for elections in March 2013. So the fact that the Commission+ECOFIN council already now take the proposed 2013 Malta budget for granted, is just utterly wrong. This is both stupid an unheard to start evaluating countries upon unpassed laws, and AFAIK also against the previous practise excersiced by the european organisations throughout the past 20 years. I am quiet angry and dissapointed about this, and as a minimum hope some of the responsible persons will be asked by the journalists, why on earth both the Commission+ECOFIN council decided not to follow the written SGP evaluation rules when evaluating Malta's EDP? Danish Expert (talk) 21:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Today the Maltese budget vote was presented by the Prime Minister. If approved it would have lowered the:

• Budget deficit from 2.3% in 2012 to 1.7% of GDP in 2013.
• Structural deficit from 3.2% in 2012 to 2.0% of GDP in 2013.
• Debt-to-GDP ratio from 71.5% in 2012 to 70.4% in 2013 and 69.0% in 2014.

The budget was however rejected with 35 against versus 34 for. As a result the parliament will be dissolved 7 January 2013, and all budget posts will be frozen at their level in 2012, followed by an early legislative election on 9 March 2013. So now we have the unpretty situation I feared. The Commission removed the Maltese EDP under asumption that the Malta 2013 budget got approved...but it was not! Now we can only wait to see how the legislative elections will fall out, and if we are lucky a new government can be formed ultimo March or in April, which subsequently can perform a new budget vote to be approved - hopefully with the same acceptable size for the budget deficit. But none of us can know the outcome of this in advance, and thus I would have preferred if the Commission had delayed their decision to abrogate the Maltese EDP, until the time where the Maltese parliament had actually passed the budget for 2013. Danish Expert (talk) 20:48, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Repetitive information

Why include the repetitive info for states that have completed ratification? All of the notable bits are included elsewhere (either in the table or the constitutional challenges section). While you might find it interesting, the date when the "detailed analysis report" was submitted isn't notable. Misplaced Pages isn't an WP:INDISCRIMINATE collection of information. This non-notable content is only WP:PRIMARY sourced. If no secondary sources find it notable enough to mention, then neither should we. Also, this article is WP:TOOLONG as it is, so we shouldn't be bloating it with redundant and non-notable content. TDL (talk) 09:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Reason why I think the descriptive "political ratification process" points should be kept, is because they are not just redundant info, but some fine supplements to the main info provided by the wikitable above, as they carry an interesting description of how the exact political process was in each of the "late ratifying countries". In example, in order to understand the complicated Irish process, we really need this extra point below to clarify the situation. In regards of Romania, it is also an interesting note for many readers, that their constitution call for all EU treaties to be passed by a joint dual-chamber 2/3 majority vote while the intergovernmental treaty is passed normaly by both individual chambers, and perhaps some Romanian wikipedians can also help us to clarify why the country used five months to deposit (i.e. it could either be court troubles, or the situation with their president being tempoarily suspended). I also think the "Submitted date" adds info to the reader by shedding light on, if the slow ratification in the mentioned country was only due to a traditionally complicated and long ratification process (i.e. as we normally have in Belgium), or perhaps had something to do with the government just being extremely slow to submit the ratification draft law to the parliament.

I can however also understand and accept you concern, that we should also limit the length of it, and only keep info that covers notable aspects. So I am ready to accept we can cook some of it down (i.e. removing the date+link for the French governments ratification recommendation). Would you be ready to accept keeping it, if we cook it? :-) Danish Expert (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I'm ok with keeping details of the ratification procedure, ie for Romania explaining why a simple majority was sufficient. I just don't see the point of repeating the dates that are already covered in the table. How about moving the details on the ratification procedure to a footnote? TDL (talk) 08:02, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

We already have the important "declaration footnote" (which I btw applaud you for adding), but I feel it would be too much to have 9 additional footnotes listed along. So I still prefer to have a sub-chapter with the info instead. To ellaborate a bit more on my argument/idea, the Ratification process (status and developments) subchapter currently only cover a full explonatory description for "late ratifiers" (being defined as those countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later). To make this point even more clear to the reader, I am ready to accept we can rename the sub-chapter to: "Ratification process for late ratifiers". IMHO it is notable enough to be kept permanently as a subchapter in the article. Currently the chapter has the function both to map the "ratification status" and to explain "ratification developments". At the point of time where all countries have ratified, the idea is to remove the "colored ratification status" but to keep the description why the country was a "late ratifier". In France, it was mainly due to the presidential election and subsequent demands by Hollande only to ratify the Fiscal Compact if the EU summit first agreed to sign a "Growth pact" (this fact is by the way mentioned by the reference I already added to the text, mentioning this point as one of the main reasons why the French government was ready to recommend the parliament to ratify -despite the president having argued differently during the presidential election). In Netherlands the delay was due to the fact that only a "provisionary government" ruled the country since April and the new fully functional government only being formed by the end of October (after elections). On the other hand, I am ready to accept your point, that a full step-wise description of the political ratification process will not be needed for each of the listed "late ratifier" countries (because once the country completed its ratification, nobody cares about the intermediate stepping dates). So I am ready to accept we remove that part of the description for most of the countries in the subchapter, but still not for countries like Ireland and Belgium, where we really need to keep a full process description in order for readers to understand their complicated and lengthy "ratification procedure". Danish Expert (talk) 08:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I have now implemented my counter proposal outlined above into the article. I kept your footnotes dealing with explonatory info about changed/special voting majority being required, as I agree with you, that footnotes are indeed better suited for this specific info. But as explained by my argument above, I still kept the "late ratifier" info for those 50% of the countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later, although now with a new more focused sub-chapter title and introduction lines, and the country specific info is now also cooked down to a more focused angle answering the quiestion: "why the ratification took so long?". What I refer to right now, is of course so far only the info listed for France+Romania. I intend also to re-write the other countries into the same structure, but only when they have completed the political approval. I hope you like the new structure. Personally I think the structure+focus is far better than before. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 14:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

You make a good point, and I agree that if there are sources which explain why a particular state took longer to ratify the treaty (ie France's election) this is notable. Your rewrite of France looks much better, however I still don't think we should include the redundant info (ie the last sentence.) As for Romania, the note really doesn't explain why ratification was delayed, so I don't see the relevance of it. TDL (talk) 00:18, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I accept your removal of the slightly redundant last French sentence. But only when the subchapter has been fully transformed not to carry any "color marked ratification status" (or at least: we have to wait for a majority of countries to turn green). Problem is, that in the current "intermediate state" the list works both with the purpose of "mapping exact ratification status" and "explaining reasons for late ratifications for slowest ratifiers", and reading through the list it might confuse some readers (not paying notice to the meaning of the green color) to believe the country perhaps still have open ratification steps. In that light, I think it is okay to keep the last slightly redundant line stating that "after completion of political approval the deposit of ratification instruments happened X/X/2012". So I have reinstated it again. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

In regards of Romania, I have managed to dig up some internet articles explaining, that the parliament temporarily suspended the Romanian president from his office arround June 2012. I think it had something to do with a corruption case (but cant remember). According to the romanian constitution the parliament can however not remove the president, but has to run a referendum asking the people to push him away. And so they did. Referendum took place in Q3-2012. The president asked all his remaining supporters to boycot the referendum -and so they did. End result was that an overwhelming majority voted for a removal of the president but as the "boycot" at the same time resulted in a turnout percentage below 50%, the referendum result was not declared to be a valid result by the Romanian constitution, and so the president still stays in office. I also found an article descriping, that there was a power struggle between the Prime Minister and Suspended President in regards of who of them should represent the country at the European summit in July 2012, where the constitutional court ruled the "Suspended President" should represent the country but only as observe (without the right to approve/sign anything before after the presidential election has descided whether or not he was still the president). Quiet a drama. Only reason why I have not written anything about it yet, is because I could so far not find a reference with explicit proof that the "temporary presidential suspension" indeed was the rootcause behind the slow Romanian deposit of the ratification instrument. I suspect it was, due to concerns/uncertainty about the binding legality of the suspended presidents signature, but without the reference prooving this was indeed the case, this currently remain to be my own personal speculation. So for a start I just limited myself to write "deposit was delayed for unkown reasons". My hope is some Romanian/other editor at one point of time can help us dig up a good reference, explaining (either explicit/implicit) why the deposit was delayed. In example it would be sufficient enough to me, if we can find a source stating "all official enactment of bills signed by the suspended Romanian president was put on hold, for as long as the president was suspended, causing a delay for new laws to enter into force during this period". Danish Expert (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, that seems reasonable. I can accept keeping the redundant details for the time being, as long as the plan is to remove them eventually. As for Romania, yes I remember the power struggle and attempt to recall the president this summer. When I get a chance, I'll try to see if I can find anything to connect it to the fiscal compact. TDL (talk) 09:16, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. For a start I have now added a short one-liner, noting it could have been a potential delaying issue -but we dont know. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I think that certain points of the "Ratification process (for late ratifiers)" section, as it is now, are completely redundant and absurd. Frankly, I believe that this section was originally used in relevant (European Union treaties') articles to help people quickly identify the (remaining) process needed for a treaty to be ratified in a particular country and also provide the sources of information to update the table (for active editors). Thus, one would read sentences such as: "A relevant bill has not yet been introduced in the parliament.", "Ratification of the treaty, will need a pass by all seven parliaments with simple majority." or "The government submitted a draft law for ratification of the treaty to Riigikogu, on 11 June 2012."

Generally speaking, this is a small section to keep the (remaining) ratification process up to date. This is why it was named "Ratification status", and only contained the countries that had not yet ratified the treaty. It does not and should not go into extensive detail, or list all the remaining or all the past process to ratify the treaty. It should do this in a broad manner, such a sentence of this sort: "The relevant bill has been approved by the Senate and is currently being discussed in (this) Dáil committee". Including all the dates which are already listed in the table and all the stages, even those not included in the table, is clearly too much.

For example, this entry:
"Estonia: The government submitted a draft law for ratification of the treaty to Riigikogu, on 11 June 2012. The draft law passed its first reading on 19 September and final second reading on 17 October, without any MPs voting against/abstaining. The political approval was completed by a presidential assent on 5 November, and the final deposit of the ratification instrument happened on 5 December 2012.",
only serves to add to the article the date the bill was introduced for ratification and nothing more. Most of its info, and even itself in its entirety, is redundant.

Generally, it always takes a long time for countries to ratify treaties, unless they are really essential for their very existence. Even treaties that concern border settlement, may take months to be ratified, if the settlement is minor. (A quick Google search will support this argument.) This is easily explainable by the fact that the parliaments concerned have loads of other issues to discuss, and usually ratification of an agreed treaty is either a mere technicality of low priority, or, requires extensive talks to reach consensus, and thus takes a long time to happen. In either case, there's no real reason to include such details in the treaty article, unless they are highly notable, which can be easily interpreted as unusual.

The only points I could think of as really relevant to this particular treaty article for the countries that have already ratified the treaty, could be summarised in two sentences, one for Romania and the president impeachment attempt, that may or may not have pushed back its deposit of the already nationally ratified treaty, and another for Malta that has to hold elections and cannot ratify "on" time.

But, what about timing, too, as the section refers to "late" ratifiers. Well, since the intended time for this treaty to become effective is January 1st, 2013, how can any ratifying country that has already deposited its instrument of ratification be called a late ratifier indeed? I mean, it's quite clear that even if the needed 12 eurozone countries deposited their ratifications on Jan 1st, still, none of them would be late, no matter if they had finished their national ratification processes back in March 2012 or, on December 27th.

Having to include other details like that the ratification bill in France was connected to another bill (which is quite common, for example, in the UK there's only one bill for the accession of Croatia to the EU and the Irish "concerns" protocol on the Lisbon treaty), or that on a certain date the bill passed the internal committee of a parliament seems quite absurd to me. Not to mention the example of the Netherlands on this section, where even the party politics are mentioned.

As it is now, this section is too long, has too many details and is up to some degree speculative.

My suggestion is to get rid of the countries that have ratified the treaty and keep a small section, or more, for unusual things that have happened, such as the constitutional challenges, the Malta elections, the impeachment attempt in Romania, and Ireland deciding to first approve the responsibility law and then deposit the ratification. One section could be named legal challenges, and another, ratification details. Also, for the current section, the colours used should be reverted to the original scheme, and each country entry should be reduced to the essential, which means, if a relevant bill has been introduced or not, on which stage it is, and what remains for the treaty to be ratified. Heracletus (talk) 20:17, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The basic idea behind the current version of the chapter Ratification process for late ratifiers, is that unusual things did happen for all countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later. In example -now when you mentioned France- it is certainly notable and important to mention, that their newly elected president first required the European Council to sign a "Compact for Growth", before he was ready to start the French ratification. When the Fiscal Compact was signed 2 March 2012, it was also described as important to ratify it as soon as possible, and that all signatories should do so before 31 December 2012. With this in mind, it is also an unusual event by-it-self, if a government subsequently opted not to submit the treaty on an early date to the national parliament. Looking among the 9 eurozone countries and 5 non-euro countries currently being classified as "late ratifiers" (with a more detailed review/note given of their unusual ratification process), it is IMHO only Estonia where we have a border-line case, where you can question if any unusual events really happened (as the Estonian government submitted the treaty in June - and completed the ratification in December).

In my opinion the fact that only 1 out 15 countries can be questioned of being "truly unusual", merit that we keep utilizing the "ratified in Q4-2012 or later" criteria for when to provide a short additional description/note to explain the ratification process in those countries. Please keep in mind, that for all countries achieving a "Green status", we are currently shortening the note the moment it turns Green. And from the moment when all of the "late ratifiers" have ratified, we will entirely remove the color scheme and redundant info (meaning the dates for presidential assent + deposit will also be removed from the notes). So the notes will gradually shrink in size with time. The reason why it is nice to keep a certain level of redundancy for the time being, is that the chapter currently also function as a "status indicator" for the ratification process in the group of countries being "late to ratify", and here it serves a purpose to get the exact status confirmed (in order not to confuse the readers). Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 16:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I cannot but disagree in a certain degree with you. I don't think there's anything really exceptional about the ratification processes in Estonia, Finland, or Slovakia. The specialities of France, Ireland, Malta and, even, the Netherlands can be summarized into one or two sentences per country. I am not sure if Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are just being slow or there are real issues there. I think this section needs to be restructured, as I have already suggested.

As this treaty bills may or may not involve constitutional issues, and, thus, most countries are consulting their constitutional courts and/or such special parliamentary committees, I think it is quite normal that there's some stalling in the ratification process. However, when the matter finally reaches the parliament itself, the procedure is usually quite quick (with the exception of Malta and the Netherlands). I think that the sections of France and the Netherlands have only to do with internal politics, and could be greatly reduced.

I believe late ratifiers should be defined as countries ratifying the treaty after this has officially come into force. I propose we split this section into a section for (late) ratifiers and their ratification process, and, another for countries that faced some quite individual issues during ratification, such as France, Ireland and Malta. For the Netherlands, I think we should only mention the general election, rather than the internal politics.

I don't find it unusual that non-eurozone countries take a long time to ratify this treaty, as the treaty doesn't involve the same rules for them (namely articles 3 and 4), and they don't have any effect on when the treaty comes into force. The stalling in most countries can be easily explained by the treaty raising constitutional issues addressed by parliaments, internal politics and long parliamentary processes, which all seem quite normal and usual. Constitutional challenges outside the parliamentary processes are not as usual and thus, have their own small section, which could be done also for the unusual ratification issues encountered in each country. Every treaty is supposed to come into force as soon as possible, but, it quite usually takes a country 6 months to a few years to fully ratify them, even when they involve nuclear weapons, accession of a country to the EU, border settlement, or whichever other topic.

On a particular level, I think Estonia (and Finland and Slovakia when they ratify) should be removed, and the entries of France and Ireland (and the Netherlands and Malta when they ratify) be moved into a different section or this section be renamed accordingly (into "ratification issues" or something along those lines). Heracletus (talk) 16:59, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

For the moment I see no reason to implement the proposed changes and a new structure. Currently the chapter function both as a section with status of the process for remaining "late ratifiers", and a compilation of notes to highlight why the ratification in several countries took longer than expected. In this way I think it really -in a good valuable way- supplements the wikitable, which only feature barenaked dates. There are the following two good reasons justifying it is okay to classify countries as "late ratifiers" if they only ratified more than eight months after signing the treaty:

1. All 17 eurozone countries managed to ratify the just as important ESM treaty within eight months after having signed the treaty (while four of them even had first to argue and win some delaying constitutional court challenges on the road).
2. All signatories of the Fiscal Compact agreed upon the time of signing, that it was of huge importance to ratify fast, as a part of the reason behind the compact was to throw some strong short term signals into the head of financial markets, about the eurozone now will start to act in a much more fiscal sound and responsible way. By ensuring a fast ratification to happen, it would show to the financial markets that this time the eurozone was really committed to improve their fiscal responsibility.

Given the two points above, it justifies why we have a short section to single out the reasons why the ratification process took longer than expected in certain countries. In Netherlands there is absolute no doubt, the delay was due to the previous government loosing their parliamentary majority in April 2012, combined with the fact that the new election only happened 12 September, and the new government was only formed primo November (while certain parties like PvdA was not ready whole-heartedly to support treaty ratification ahead of the election -due to what I speculate had something to do with an attempt not to support "unpopulair" decisions -in the eyes of their potential electional base- shortly ahead of the election). As internal politics definately caused a delay of the Dutch ratification, it is justified shortly to mention this in our articles current section. Speaking about Finland, this country opted to ratify both the Compact and the much more complicated "implementation law" as a combined bill, and that's why it was only submitted in November 2012. This is also an interesting info for the readers, as this info can not be extracted from the wikitable above with barenaked dates. So far only Ireland+Finland chose this more complicated approach (perhaps due to special legal rules in those two countries - but I really dont know). All other countries opted first to ratify the Fiscal Compact, and then afterwords deal with the needed "implementation law" in a seperate new law (mostly because the Compact outlined that the deadline for passing "implementation laws" is 1 Jan 2014, and the agreed deadline for ratifying the Compact was 1 Jan 2013). So the idea from the start, was that the Compact should be ratified as fast as possible. To be frank, there has also really been no constitutional court cases in the process (except for Germany), as all countries did not prepare "constitutional implementation laws" as part of the Fiscal Compact ratification process. Even in France there was no court case, but only a usual consultation between the government and the constitutional court, if it would be okay only to ratify the treaty with simple majority and outside constitutional paragraphs (ahead of starting the process in the parliament). So there has really been no constitutional challenges (except for Germany) justifying a late/delayed ratification. Anyway - I want to emphasize, that the idea of having the "late ratifiers" section in the article, is however not to create any negative blaming list, but the main idea is really instead to have a section that shortly explains why ratification in certain countries took longer than expected (as it currently does). In most -if not all countries- we had some good explanations. Why should we hide those explanations for the readers, by deleting the notes?

I also see no reaseon currently to start splitting up the section into several sub-sections. This would be more confusing than helpfull. It is better just to have one section dealing with all "late ratifiers" - both in regards of noting "current ratification status" and the main reason why "ratification was slow". The basic idea, is temporarily to allow for in depth "ratification status" details in the notes - for as long as the country has a red/yellow/blue status. But when it turn green we are shorting down the notes, so that it only contain info about the main reason why "ratification was slow". Actually I think it all makes good sence. I can perhaps agree you have a slight point, by stating that it is "less important" for non-euro countries to deliver a fast ratification (due to standing outside the eurozone). But on the other hand, when the non-euro countries are not even legally bound by the treaty after ratification, it also makes it a bit strange and a signal of "no true commmitment" if they do not ratify the Fiscal Compact along with the deadlines for the eurozone. Why hold it back - if it is not even binding? So to me it is also unusual/notable, when non-euro countries did not ratify within eight months. They also shook hands on 2 March 2012, that it was very important to deliver a fast ratification, and are not even hardly affected by the rules straight away. So what has been holding them back? I would really like to know, and that is why I appreciate to have the explonatory section. It is interesting to know, that the delay was caused by "political power struggles" in Romania, and that Sweden apparently have a special tradition of conducting length "publing hearings for 3 months" before starting to ratify anything. I think good explanations and sources will eventually emerge for all late ratifiers. The concept of having a small section for it (as we have now), is in my point of view a very good idea. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 01:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding to reply on your first section which involves politics and a discussion on why the ESM had to be ratified sooner than the Fiscal Compact, I will just stick to this sentence you wrote: "Given the two points above, it justifies why we have a short section to single out the reasons why the ratification process took longer than expected in certain countries." The key point there is longer than expected, because the date by which at least 12 eurozone countries have been expected to have fully ratified this treaty is January 1st, 2013. This is what the wording of the treaty clearly implies. So, until that date, or the actual date on which the treaty becomes effective, no country can be considered late.

You may mention elections and the period of inactivity before them, in general, but, internal politics and certain parties policies are always speculative. This is quite easy to explain, in the same way that opinion polls are not always bearing the same results as elections, a party statement that it supports or does not a certain bill is not always indicative of how the bill will be voted on by its MP's. It always has to do with the exact statement and the person making it, and, generally, this information is redundant. Eventually the parliament will vote on it and we'll see if it passed and who voted how on it, or the bill will be withdrawn and noone will ever know what might have happened. In the same fashion, we could have detailed results per party, per parliament, per country. And, these are not even results, they are statements of intention by some parties, in a particular country, the Netherlands. They're nice info to include before the actual vote, perhaps, but, once a vote is taken, they will not really mean anything anymore. In their very essence, they are opinion polls of parties (representing their PM's) before a vote, with the clear reflection of certain people (representing the whole population) participating in an opinion poll before elections.

You do mention yourself that "the agreed deadline for ratifying the Compact was 1 Jan 2013", so, you provide yourself the counter-argument for the inclusion of certain countries in the late ratifiers category. I think it's more interesting to know which countries have already passed an implementation law, rather than if that happened in a combined ratification law. Finland and Ireland which already passed an implementation law before depositing the ratification instrument did NOT miss the "agreed deadline", yet, you want to include them in the late ratifiers section.

You also state that you don't understand why a country would not ratify a treaty that is not legally binding for itself as soon as possible. Well, the answer may lie in what I wrote about parliaments having enough load already and thus assigning low priority onto it? Also, by referring to stalling due to constitutional issues, I was not explicitly referring to legal challenges, but, also to most parliaments seeking to define (either by consulting the national constitutional court, or a relevant committee) how this treaty should be ratified and what, if any, constitutional issues arise from it, BEFORE they started actually ratifying it, thus rendering any constitutional challenges on it AFTER it has been ratified null.

Also, as this is not a general article on the parliamentary process, or about bills, in Sweden, and you acknowledged that "Sweden apparently ha a special tradition of conducting length "publi hearings for 3 months" before starting to ratify anything", don't you think including this here is redundant? The parliament there just follows the usual procedure, after all... However, I find the incompatibility section in the Sweden entry quite important to include as it is particular for this treaty and a unique case.

Anyway, we've made our points, we disagree and there's no third opinion on the matter yet, so, I don't see any point in continuing to argue here.Heracletus (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Heracletus, this has become ridiculous. Nearly all the details you've sourced to WP:PRIMARY sources. WP:SECONDARY sources don't mention these details because they aren't notable. Just because a state was late ratifying, doesn't mean that something strange did happen. Sometimes, states are just slow. We should only cover notable delays in the process, not all states who were "late" by the criteria you invented. Since you've kept adding this non-notable information after our previous discussion on this topic, I'm going to start reverting as per WP:BRD. Please seek consensus on the talk page before re-adding all these non-notable details. The article is already WP:TOOLONG. We should be cutting all the trivia out, not adding more. TDL (talk) 05:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Your act is offensive, TDL. Earlier on in this debate at 29 November, the two of us together agreed on a compromise and consensus for the content in this sub-chapter. You are not allowed few hours after a second editor post his oppinion at the talkpage, suddenly to declare a new WP:Consensus for your own view point, and certainly not just on the basis of counting that we (apparently) for the moment have two editors vote standing against another editors vote. This is not how consensus rules work here at Misplaced Pages, where consensus is reached through debate -exchange of views- and letting the strongest argument win, or develop consensus through that road. I will ask you to carefully read the WP:Consensus. The fact that you just bluntly deletes ALL GREEN INFO points is ridiculous. Heracletus, stated he actually found value in certain parts of the info points, but just suggested another structure and way to present it. You have ignored that fact, and now just violently removed it all. Based on that, I have to completely undo your removal. I persist, that before enforcing violent changes to the article, we have first to reach consensus about what to do, here at the talkpage. I am ready to consider some of the proposals Heracletus mentioned above (but certainly not ready to accept that you remove everything). In the process of reaching a consensus, it is very hard to consider and debate a new structure for the content, if all the content suddenly is removed from the page. This is the ground, why I now reinstate the deleted material again, so that we can debate and reach a true consensus. Danish Expert (talk) 11:38, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite the few reverts and a few harsh words, this has been quite the most polite dispute I have faced. Nevertheless, do you think that someone should refer this to dispute resolution, not so much because it is anything close to a major dispute, but so as to get more opinions on the matter and more people involved? If you think it's a good idea, you may pick one of the six ways, here: WP:DR. I did try to ask for more opinions on the WikiProject European Union (WP:EU), but so far got no reaction. Heracletus (talk) 17:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

@Danish Expert: No need to get defensive. I never declared that there was a new consensus, I simply said that there was no consensus to add all this information, and undid your edits. If you'd like to add the info to the article it's your responsibility to seek consensus to add it, not my responsiibility to establish a consensus to keep it out. I simply followed WP:BRD. Your additions have been reverted, now you need to establish a consensus on the talk page for them. If you'd like to engage in a WP:DR process such as a WP:RFC on the issue, I'd gladly participate in that.

Please note that I didn't "bluntly deletes ALL GREEN INFO points", as you suggest. The edits by an IP were not me, and I don't support their removal. I agree with Heracletus that there are details on France and Ireland that is notable that should be kept. Instead of attacking me, you should try to WP:AGF as I have done of you. Please don't restore your disputed content until there is a consensus to include it. TDL (talk) 21:09, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, because this is going towards a revert war, I suggest either of you requests a dispute resolution now. I may disagree with Danish expert, but, I must also note that things are not exactly like you put them, TLD. The BRD is about being bold once, being reverted, discussing, it's not being bold twice and re-reverting before the new consensus is reached. I may agree with your changes (or not), personally, but, I don't think we have reached consensus, as Danish expert's arguments are not to be entirely ignored. I don't think there have been any real attacks on anyone personally yet, and I wish we will not go into that. I see what we have all written as referring to the content of the page, and not the people involved.

I also have to note that either side must establish consensus involving the other side. If consensus has not been established in general, including or excluding even a single sentence cannot be considered legitimate. Also, BRD is not a policy, and its page includes this: "BRD is not an excuse to revert any change more than once. If your reversion is met with another bold effort, then you should consider not reverting, but discussing." I would suggest reverting back to the version with Danish expert's edits, or keeping them as comments inside <!-- -->, to serve as a discussion basis, if TLD agrees.

I also have no problem submitting the dispute resolution request myself, if we first reach consensus on which kind we/you want to apply for. I may also apply for a resolution even if you cannot agree on which kind, if things escalate.

If this article is so important for either of you, consider, instead of reverting, using your own sandbox, which can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Mypage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_Sandbox/preload to present a version of what you would like the page to look like. (For future easy access, you can put {{My sandbox}} on your user page.)

No offence meant. Heracletus (talk) 21:53, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree, there is no consensus, but my edit isn't the bold one, it is the revert. Danish Expert boldly added lots of non-notable content, and I reverted until a consensus is reached for its inclusion. I attempted to do this with a partial revert, since some of the additions were worthwhile, however if you or Danish Expert desire I can do a full revert back to a undisputed state. I'll happily participate in any form of DR. A RFC, as I suggested above, is probably the best course. TDL (talk) 22:48, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I have been a couple of day offline for Christmas, but now have time to respond shortly. Sorry if I got a little heated above. After checking the edit history, I can also see you are right that another IP removed the remaining Green points, so I apology for accusing you for that before having carefully checked. However, I still insist your removal of content was bold and unjustified, TDL. Because ahead of the removal the two of us had agreed it was OK the sub-chapter temporarily (for as long as countries had red/yellow/blue status) could function as a status chapter with in depth status details being listed and acceptance of a certain level of redundant info with the table above. The fact that you choose again to remove the disputed content after I had reinstated the content and provided good valid grounds for why it was important to keep until a new consensus was reached (as it was hard to get other editors evaluation and input for consensus if the disputed points had been removed), I feel tends to be directly provocative and not helping our discussion at all. On the contrary it spoils the attempt to reach a new consensus, and was a bad move.

I also insist this info you dispute and continue to remove, is certainly not trivia. On the contrary it helps readers to understand how far the ratification progressed in remaining countries that are still in the process to ratify, and provide high quality explanations why the ratification was late / delayed. I think it is very informative - and something being highly appreciated by the readers. Our first agreement and consensus reached on 29 November, was to heavily cook down the amount of details mentioned the moment a country reached a "green status". This is actually also what I have done until now (although as explained above, I did not remove the redundant info with date for presidential assent + deposit, as I felt this was needed for as long as the chapter primarily functioned as a "status chapter" - in order to prevent the readers getting confused about the "true status"). Again I have to repeat, that the reason why details are currently dense for "Red/Yellow countries" like Netherlands/Belgium/Poland, is to provide readers with a high quality status for the ratification progress. The moment these countries have ratified and become Green, I agree with you that it is possible and fully justified to omit unneeded details from the process. But: Only from the very moment where a country turn into "Green status". And the moment when all countries are listed green in the sub-chapter, I also agree it is okay to remove the color code and all redundant info. So as time progress, it will heavily shrink in size. This is also why, I really do not share you concern for the article to develop into something like {Toolong}. We actually already on 29 November agreed on a strategy that will prevent a {Toolong}. Danish Expert (talk) 01:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for a new consensus solution

To move the discussion and consensus attempt a bit forward, I am ready to accept the point stated above by Heracletus, in regards of changing the "late ratification" criteria from the previous post "1 October 2012" deadline to "1 January 2013" (the date of entry into force, and the official target deadline from the start). The reason why I initially chose "1 October 2012" was because I could see a pattern, that there were special circumstances in 13 out of 14 countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later, with the only exception being Estonia. Given the argument given by Heracletus about the deadline being irrationally picked, I can however also agree, that he indeed has a point to describe it does not make sense to call countries for "late ratifiers" when this in principle contradicts with the fact that they managed to be within the "target deadline" for ratification. On this ground, I am ready to accept we can now change the "Late ratifiers" chapter only to list countries ending their ratification post 1 January 2013. This consensus proposal is however conditional, that we along the way also create an additional sub-chapter still to mention those countries which had notable ratification events during their ratification process. In order to avoid a forest of sub-chapters, my proposal however goes, that we could simply have one subchapter entitled "late ratifiers", and a second entitled "Significant events for early ratifiers" (incl. German constitutional court challenge, French push for conditional Growth Pact, Irish+Finnish government opting for the approach to delay ratification until also first having enacted an "implementation law", etc.). My parenthesis should currently be understood in this way, that we continue listing "country info" in this chapter as per a bullet point with all significant events for each country. In example, Ireland had more than one. With this new proposed structure, I can of course also accept striping away green color code (incl. redundant info) for all the countries to be listed in the second chapter. But insist to keep color code + redundant info temporarily in the first chapter, as per our consensus originally reached on 29 November (but now with the criteria of being a "late ratifier" being pushed from the 1 October 2012 deadline to 1 January 2013). Could this be a solution and compromise that you are willing to support? Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 01:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I agreed not to push for the removal of the existing non-notable/redundant content in the article, however I didn't agree to the addition of even more. I really don't feel that I removed any significant details from the Red/Yellow countries, I mainly just cut down the repetitiveness of the text. If you think I've removed something important, you can either selectively restore it or take it to the talk page and we can discuss it point-by-point. Also, if you'd like to restore the section on Estonia and a brief description on Finland (per our previous agreement) I won't revert (though I don't agree that this info is notable enough to warrant a paragraph), however I object to all the other minute details that have been added since.

As for your suggestion of "1 January 2013", I object to a specific date altogether. If something notable happened in a state that ratified before 1 January 2013, we should mention it in the "significant events" section. If a state ratifies the treaty in February 2013 and nothing notable happened, it should be deleted. Basically, I'd support your proposal as long as a state is moved from the "late ratifiers" to the "significant events" section and all the redundant info deleted immediately after ratification by the state. TDL (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Answer to TDL about his previous removal/re-edit of material (inappropriately made before our consensus debate had ended): My earlier opinion about this is unchanged. Only point I want to rectify compared to my previous reply, is that you indeed did not remove red/yellow/blue content, but in your reply at the talkpage you questioned its notability and expressed a desire that you wanted to remove it. The way I described it here at the talkpage, this was not perfectly clear, and your move sounded to be more "violent"/bold that it actually was. Sorry for that. Yet, my main point still stands, that removals/changes of edits currently content for consensus debate about its existence and structure here at the talkpage, was a bad move and actually makes it more difficult plus time consuming now to reach the consensus we all attempt to reach. I will now start to read through all the changes you made since 22 December at the disputed subsection, and see to what degree I can approve your country-specific changes. My only point is, that in situations like this (with an ongoing consensus debate), we will accidently use too much of each others valuable time (compared to the level of positive results this effort provides), if we constantly re-edit each others edits in the disputed chapter before having reached consensus. It is much more time efficient first to reach consensus, and then only subsequently start to change/re-edit content. I feel the damage has already been done, but just hope you will be more patient in the future, before you start to re-edit or remove material being content for an ongoing consensus debate.

Argument for permanent "Late ratifiers (post 1 January 2013)" chapter: The Fiscal Compact treaty enters into force 1 January 2013 for 16 countries, and define interdependent subsequent deadlines (being 12 months after the treaty's "entry into force") for when the countries at the latest need to enact required "implementation laws". As countries ratifying after 1 January 2013 will have a later "entry into force" and hence also later deadlines for enactment of "implementation laws", this by-it-self (in particular when also keeping in mind the political commitments outspoken at the time of signing the treaty, which emphasized the need for all countries to do their outmost to reach a fast ratification of the treaty before 1 January 2013), really justify why we also create and permanently keep to display a section that highlights some short key-info and explanation for why the ratification for "late ratifiers" became delayed. I still insist, that most readers will find this info notable and interesting.

Argument for notability of "status content": On an overall level the notability of my content and add of status info is justified by the fact, that we currently have two high quality WP:SECONDARY sources frequently updated and published by two different departments of the European parliament (Directorate General for the Presidency and Directorate general for internal policies), and even also a Misplaced Pages:TERTIARY source from IIEA. This proofs people are highly interested to read and learn details about the ratification status. The fact that our Misplaced Pages article's "status section" is build only on WP:PRIMARY sources and in fact has a higher degree of quality and accurate info compared to the two WP:SECONDARY sources from the European Parliament, is basically just something we should be proud of. This is a result of dedicated hard work from certain wikipedian editors, who managed to dig up correct status info from the golden level of the primary source itself.

Argument why WP:TOOLONG concerns do not justify removal of content: If sections of notable info becomes too heavy in an article, the general policy always is not to delete it, but to spin-off the content into sub-articles and writing a shorter resume at the main article.

Proposal for further talkpage debate on notability of certain country-info: Previously I have already listed some of my country specific arguments. But currently I feel it is impossible to debate both the "general notability" + "chapter structure" + "country specific info" in the one and same reply here at the talkpage. If we start now also to discuss country specific details, I fear this will derail the debate and attempt to reach consensus for "notability criteria" and "chapter structure". My proposal is first to reach consensus for that, before we start to discuss country specific details. Or at least we should deal with country specific debates at dedicated sub-sections here at the talkpage.

Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 11:56, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

As this seems to my eyes as an implementation of my suggestions, I agree on principle. However, I still have a number of reservations. First of all, I think we should somehow achieve a more broad consensus, because changes in the format of this article will probably modify the format of the pages for any new EU treaties. I mean, the general layout and format of this article is clearly the same used for all the latest EU treaties, i.e. first the ratification table and underneath it a ratification process section\list that slowly disappeared as the countries ratified the treaty. I think this could be done by requesting dispute resolution through an RFC. In the opposite case, I think the consensus that may be achieved now will be revisited and debated upon again quite soon. Secondly, I am not sure if we would all agree on the same entries for the ratification issues per country. The definition of what constitutes a significant event has already been debated above. An example of this, are the implementation laws. For me, it would be more interesting and helpful to have another column on some table stating whether a country has enacted a compatible (or in the case of Sweden not so compatible) implementation law, but this may prove difficult to check and is not included in any secondary source. The fact that Finland chose to pass the bill ratifying the treaty together with an implementation law does not seem so significant to me, whereas the fact that Ireland had to wait a long time for the implementation law to be voted upon and only then deposited its ratification seems more significant. On a third point, I would not like to see any mentions to the ratification process in such a section, other than what is really needed to explain the issue mentioned. The two or three sections, could be merged as they (almost) are now, with the countries that have ratified moving up and the others having a subsection label of "late ratifiers" or "ratification still pending". Generally, we may or may not disagree on the details, but, I also think an RFC could be useful for future articles, too.

I also agree with TDL's approach for late ratifiers, when they ratify and nothing significant has happened, they should be gone. The fact that they were late can be easily denoted with a footnote on the table.

As you still seem to disagree whose edit was the least constructive, I do suggest you engage in dispute resolution somehow. Heracletus (talk) 14:25, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for my late reply, Heracletus. I got caught up by holiday travels and other work on the agenda, but now have time to thoughtfully respond with the following 3 replies:

Reply on the proposal to develop a common standard for future "ratification articles" through a RFC process (reservation 1): I see no need at the moment to launch a RFC solution, as we already have a good handfull of engaged editors involved to push this Fiscal Compact article in the right direction. At some point of time a RFC might be a good idea if we continue to disagree, but not right now. In my point of view it is also just a small part of the newly proposed consensus style (namely the part about using the red/yellow/blue/green color as status indicator for progress of ratification) which is subject for future use in other treaty ratification articles. And I do not think it should be a new standard used blindly on all sorts of treaty ratification articles. In example it has been appropriate for the Fiscal Compact treaty to map its ratification developments more closeley in each country due to its importance and fiscal effect in each of the ratifying states, while I would never provide the same kind of details for the ratification article on Croatia's accesion treaty. The idea to highlight significant events delaying the ratification, should in my point of view alos be limited only to be used for treaties with a specific target date. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply on notability of the integrated ratification approach picked by Ireland+Finland: The reason why this is notable for both countries is:

1. It deviates from the outlined ratification approach in the treaty which ask countries to follow a two step approach where the treaty should first be ratified as soon as possible (and prior 1 Jan 2013), followed by a 12-month deadline to subsequently deal with enactment of compliant implementation laws.
2. On the day where the treaty was signed all signatories shook hands on the importance of ratifying the treaty as fast as possible, due to the symbolic calming effects this kind of commitment would generate towards the nervous financial markets in Europe; and as an instrument to secure a fast ratification the two-step approach obviously is the best, as countries following this approach can wait until a later time to design the detailed domestic laws with all the complicated implementation stuff.
3. So far only Ireland+Finland opted to follow the combined ratification approach which in both cases significantly delayed their ratification of the treaty - which is notable for the article - because it informs the reader why the process took so long time to complete in Ireland and why Finland was one of the last countries to ratify despite having a reputation of being one of the most committed countries. This is why I still think this special process should be shortly noted for both countries.

Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply on use of footnotes for "late ratifiers" (completing after 1 Jan 2013): I have two reasons why I still prefer we instead should continue to use the list-format in the subchapter (with a short note of the delaying ratification events for late ratifiers) -and not convert it into footnotes. First reason is, that it provides a better and more logical structure in the article to let the footnotes only deal with certain limited fields of info (which is the argument of only letting the subchapter deal with all explanations of "late ratifications" - and YES we have "significant events/non-events" for all "late ratifiers" which help to explain why it took so long). Second reason is to preserve a more pleasent layout, where I think a too dense or long list of footnotes should be avoided, and thus I prefer not to use them for notice on "late ratifiers" and their delayed deadlines for "implementation law" ratifications (prefering this info to be listed shortly in the subchapter). Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Next time you mess with the comments, I will make a huge deal over it, and it may go bad. I understand the section was not well-ordered, but, you may not mess with other people's comments to restructure them so that you can answer. At least, not without asking. Read this WP:TPO. Heracletus (talk) 05:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Most EU treaties use the same format, and usually have a target date, formal or informal. An RFC would solve most issues.

There's no two-step approach. The treaty just gives ratifiers a concise amount of time to implement its fiscal provisions into national legislation. They "shook hands", now, didn't they? In my honest opinion, it is not really important if a country voted the implementation law together with the treaty, if it did so 3 days after it voted for the treaty or six months later. What is important is which countries have ratified it and, which countries have enacted an implementation law, and if this is fortified in their constitution or not.

Honestly, a footnote is much much shorter than a full-blown section for late ratifiers. And, honestly, 2 or more years after a certain country has ratified the treaty, nobody will really care if a certain Senate had the second reading on one date or the other... If something is notable, it will survive, whether the country is a "late ratifier" or not. And whether a country has ratified the treaty after it had already come into force for other countries or not, can be shown by a one-line footnote. Heracletus (talk) 06:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

General debate on the best use of policies/approaches to reach a consensus at Misplaced Pages

@Danish Expert: You're misunderstanding how the WP:EP here works. You added some content that I found to be non-notable, and I removed it as per WP:BRD. It's not my responsibility to be patient and leave the content in the article until you establish a consensus for its inclusion. It's your responsibility to demonstrate that there is a consensus for its inclusion. In the future I hope that you will be more patient before trying to edit war content into the article for which there is not yet a consensus. Yes it is notable that some state were "late" ratifying the treaty, but we don't need an entire section to mention that. But the table clearly gives the date of ratification, and as Heracletus suggests we could even add a footnote to the states that ratified after the entry into force of the treaty if you like. We don't need an entire section to say only "they were late".TDL (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

So now you accuse me of "misunderstanding WP:EP + WP:BRD" and "trying to edit war"??? In order not to repeat myself, I will just refer to my previous replies above, where I provided a high quality explanation why I at 1 time undid your removal of content currently being debated for a consensus approach. When you shortly afterwords undid my revert a second time, Heracletus agreed with me you did not have the right to do so according to WP:BRD. You were simply too bold, and completely ignored to respond on my carefully listed argument for why a "status quo of content" should be kept for as long as our ongoing consensus debate had not been concluded at the talkpage. I of course assume you acted in good faith here, and think it is pointless to use anymore time to debate your inappropriate repeated use of the WP:BRD "reverting tool". My only point was, that I think it would have been faster and easier to debate the structure of the subchapter, if you had not at first removed all the issues you personally had for some of the lines/countries (and none of your replies have changed my oppinion on this). In order to prevent an edit war, I however long time ago for this single case accepted your opposite approach (First to remove things - and then to start a debate wether or not the removed and now invisible content should have been removed or not). Both of us are obviously deeply engaged to improve the article, and have put many hours into this during the past year. I think we should both focus on the article now, and settle our non contributing dispute on wether or not it is best to "temporarily keep"/"immedeately delete" content being actively debated for consensus (after an editor has posted such a request as a friendly respond on your first use of WP:BRD). By the way, I also never argued for a section dedicated just repeatedly to note "they were late", but as described in full detail by my reply above, my argument is, that it would be good if we continue to have a subchapter with short lines providing the "explanation(s) why certain states had a delayed ratification". Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

You and TDL are both "bad boys" (assuming you're males), and love to change each other's edits (cf. "wording" edits - where the wording is/was quite ok and you keep changing it per POV). In the end, you will either have the discretion to stop playing like that, or ask for dispute resolution, or keep it down, or, ask for an admin... Danish Expert, you usually want to include highly detailed content that is not very notable. Ok, perhaps, some newspapers will report that one of the two or of the 6 branches of a country's parliaments have passed a law on a specific date, but, even local newspapers on uneventful summer days will not go into details about first, second or third reading dates. TDL, you may be playing by the rules, but, like a good lawyer, you know how to (ab)use them; it is not exactly well-established who was doing what per BRD (and, it's not even an official policy), and, you made a point about the thing for Belgium being OR, and, yet, you commented it out and did more OR.... Also, your merging edit of eurozone and non-eurozone ratifiers was highly arguable and POV (only 2 non-eurozone have declared they want to be treated like the eurozone ratifiers). Please, people, let's stop arguing over and over the same things. I think the section is fine as it is now. I think it was also fine when it was not merged. And, I think that most of the notable content will survive in the end. Please try to refrain from POV and arguable edits, or discuss them for consensus.

Arguments like "you have to establish consensus to keep this there" are as valid as "you have to establish consensus to remove that from there". Also, "that has", "which has", "having" and a few other words can be used to say the same thing, and are all STANDARD English. Danish Expert, I accuse you of not understanding what is notable to be included, how many words are enough to say something in the article, and, not always using good English. TDL, I accuse you of using the above-mentioned shortcomings of Danish Expert to sometimes push your own POV on the article in insignificant ways, such as style. None of these accusations are meant seriously, but, some of your points and edits seem to me to be backing these points. You are both good editors and provide valuable information. Keep up the good work and try to address your shortcomings. Heracletus (talk) 07:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Removed Belgian subnote for false source info and the note about the Romanian president being impeached

@Danish Expert: Text such as "The Policy Department of the European Parliament claimed in their most recent status report, that the draft law for ratification of the Fiscal Compact had been submitted to the Senate on 14 November but as of 20 December it was still not visible on the list of all submitted draft law proposals, at the Senate's website. Thus, it appear the source claiming it was submitted to the Belgian Senate is wrong, and accidently mixed up the info with the fact, that the draft law to ratify the treaty allowing for Croatia's accession to EU (with a very similar title), was submitted to the Belgian Senate on 14 November." and "it is currently unknown if this power struggle started by the Prime Minister, indeed also was a root cause for delaying the deposit." is speculative WP:OR that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. You may think this is a "high quality explanations why the ratification was late / delayed", however this is your personal opinion and not an opinion published by a reliable secondary source. TDL (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that the two speculative sections are totally unneeded. The first one is very useful to editors as a comment, until a new report is released by the European Parliament, and the second one could survive as a carefully worded link to the Romanian referendum. Heracletus (talk) 14:25, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

@Heracletus: As for the specific cases, we can't "guess" that the European Parliament has made a mistake. If RS say that they've mixed up two bills, then by all means we should mention it. But we shouldn't do WP:OR to conclude that they're mistaken.

Same for Romania, unless a RS connects the fiscal compact to the referendum nether should we. WP:SYN says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." If we wrote: "Romania didn't submit to November. There was a referendum in July." this clearly implies something that is not explicitly stated by a RS. TDL (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

To be completely honest, we could add it and add the "citation needed" template next to it. To be even more honest, we all know why it's so difficult to find a reliable source about it: very few people really care that much why the deposit of the ratification happened 5 months after it was ratified. I also don't think that the impeachment attempt played a significant role to when the ratification was deposited, after all, since the romanian president was suspended from 6 July to 21 August, and the instrument of ratification was submitted only on 6 November 2012, but, perhaps it did. Heracletus (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I can accept TDL changed my subnote about the source making a false status for Belgium into a hidden note (as it is in first place only subinfo to guide the true hardcore followers of the subject with info why Misplaced Pages maps another status compared to the latest false report comming from the European Parliament). In regards of Romania, I feel we already had this debate back in November, where we after exchanging well-thought arguments on the subject, agreed it was okay to keep the carefully worded one-liner noting "the impeachment of the Romanian president possibly caused a delay for the deposit of ratification instruments"? The intention of keeping the Romanian note, was that it hopefully could lurke a journalist or any wikipedian editor with knowledge/time to read through the Romanian documents, to invistigate/clarify the matter at some point of time. The note never claimed it was a given fact the impeachment alone caused the entire deposit delay, but only mentioned it as a potential reason for the the delayed deposit. Looking at all deposits for past ratified treaties, you will find that if it takes more than 3 months to deposit there will always be a specific reason why the process to deposit got delayed. Beside of "political turmoil caused by the presidential impeachment", it can also be a court challenge? Or simply because Romania wanted to deposit the "implementation law" along with the treaty? And for Romania it could potentially perhaps also be a matter of having forgot in first place to decide wether or not a "declaration of intend" should be attached to the ratification (which we know they did by the end of the day, but it would be great if someone also checked if this was included from the start, as I am currently out of time to read through all the Romanian google translated law proposals and case documents). As a concluding remark, I feel it is fully justified to keep the Romanian note in its previously formulated version, as I believe this by time will help motivating other editors to try and help finding a sourced reason, for why the Romanian deposit was unexpectedly delayed. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Danish Expert, the Belgian note was perfect, just could not be sourced, thus, it's still a perfect internal comment. TDL's verification was a bit redundant. However, the note/comment will disappear probably, when a new report is published, or when Belgium starts processing the ratification law. The thing about Romania is that it cannot be sourced, either. So, either you have to find a source yourself, or we cannot include it. We could include it along with a citation needed tag, but, still, that will leave it to the discretion of any editor, including TDL, to just remove it after some short time. Heracletus (talk) 07:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal of adding an implementation law column to the ratification table

@Heracletus: Agreed, a column/table on the implementation law would be a good idea. TDL (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

On an irrelevant note, Corsica needs to be painted dark blue on the map. I also found out that the deutsche bank research publishes periodically an update to what has happened with the fiscal compact so far, which also includes a table with the progess of "debt brake" laws, i.e. the implementation laws in each country. The latest one can be found here: and we can use it accordingly. Newer versions will probably be posted here: . Heracletus (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like BHL beat me to Corsica. As for listing the details of the "debt brake" laws, yes that's a good source. We'll have to have to decide whether we want a separate table or just a new column. I suppose it depends on how much information we want to include. If we want to do a step-by-step approval process, as for the treaty itself, with "Conclusion date; Institution; Majority needed; In favour; Against; AB" I think it would be better to put it in a separate table. If we just want to list the final date of approval of the imlpemenation law, we could add a column after "Deposited". What do you think? TDL (talk) 05:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I personally would be in favour of the single column solution. But, I don't think it would look very good on the current table, as this is structured focusing on the ratification process and a column for (a different) implementation process will not fit very well into its context. I think it could stand as a separate column or small number of columns, but, I don't think it should be a full-blown table like the one for ratification. However, I hope we will reach consensus on this issue, too. If noone disagrees, I would be grateful if you could open an RFC section for all the issues of this section, so, that we could discuss all issues together and reach an overall conclusion. Heracletus (talk) 06:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, I don't think all the in depth details of the implementation law are really that notable. Perhaps the best solution would be to add a column with either a yes/no or a date of approval to the table in the "Fiscal compliance" section with this info? TDL (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, I agree with this, too. You can find an incomplete experiment to implement this into the ratification table here: User:Heracletus/sandbox. However, I think it's probably better to be implemented somehow in another section, and on a somehow separate table. You can use my solution somehow, to implement it as a "separate" table. Heracletus (talk) 12:27, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The idea to add "implementation law" info for all 25 countries by an extra column is okay with me. But I do not see any notabililty for us to list specific enactment dates (as this would basically not tell readers anything new, when they already know implementation laws should be enacted within 12 months after the treaty entered into force), but I think it would be fine shortly to note with abbreviations the type of picked implementation law enactment in each country: C (for Constitution), O (for Ordinary law), NC (for Non Compliant). The Commission and ECJ have been granted the task to map if implementation laws have been enacted timely and compliantly in each country, and will most likely publish a compliance report about the issue around January 2014. The only countries allowed to be Non Compliant after 1 January 2014 (if we disregard the small group of countries having a couple of months extra in deadline time due to a completed treaty ratification only in Q1-2013), will be those non-euro countries not having submitted declarations of being bound be the deadline to enact compliant implementation laws before on the date they adopt the euro. This minor change to the wikitable, however will not change my view, that we should still have a small subchapter below to list all significant events having a delaying effect on the ratification process (not only for the 9 countries ratifying after the target date 1 January 2013, but also for those countries ratifying prior but suffering a significant delaying event which causes any reader who look at the dates in the "ratification table" to wonder why the ratification took longer than it usually does). Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

"any reader who look at the dates in the "ratification table" to wonder why the ratification took longer than it usually does"... i.e. you, Danish Expert... :P

Actually, we will need 4 categories, ordinary law enacted with majority vote, ordinary law enacted with 2/3 supermajority vote, law amending the constitution and law which is non-compliant to (the provisions of) the treaty. Please take a look on my sandbox, and, feel free to contribute any edits there. There are two issues: whether we should use the ratification table, or the table in the fiscal compliance chapter of the page, and, if you like the visual style of the separate extra column(s). I will merge the new columns into a single one with the four different category footnotes, when I have time. Heracletus (talk) 07:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Why was the full Irish ratification data removed from the wikitable?

As explained by the note listed in the subchapter, the deposit of ratification instruments for the treaty clearly awaited Ireland first to enact the related "implementation law" (or "statute bill"). By keeping the date lines for the "Statute bill" listed in the wikitable, it help readers to understand why the deposit in Ireland took so long, after receiving its presidential assent. This is why I think we should keep the lines in the table. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We already have that info in the ratification process section. The corresponding dates are not that important. Heracletus (talk) 05:36, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Why is the "French court decision" still listed as a subchapter note?

We already copied the note into a footnote comment, and it is redundant to list it again in the subchapter. The reason why it belongs to the footnote section, is that IT WAS NOT a court challenge but a part of the normal political process in France, where Hollande asked the court in-ante to decide if the treaty could be ratified and implemented by ordinary law and simple majority. The court replied yes to this, and then Hollande's government chose to submit a law proposal to the government following this approach. In France they are as a part of their standard political lawmaking process, very often using the court to give its legal advice prior of the government submitting a complicated law proposal to the parliament. In other states, they are using a "Council of State" to submit legal advise. This is why the decision by the French court does not count as an extraordinary "court challenge", with its own right to be highlighted in the subchapter for that. It is appropriate as a footnote (precisily as it stands now), as this shortly explain why the "majority needed" ended at 50% in France. But it should be removed as a point from the subchapter "Constitutional court challenges", as it was not a court challenge. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree, you may remove it. Heracletus (talk) 05:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Luxembourgish Council of State

The Council of State of Luxembourg has according to our own page (and the contitution) only an advisory right. That right is -I believe- authomatically exercised in all proposed legislation. Now advices are often ignored, and advises of the council of State of the Netherlands often are (I can give loads of refs; this is relevant because they have the same historical bases). I think it is therefore not enough to base our statement that a 2/3 majority is needed on that advise, but more info is needed to provide that decision (and thus we can not put it in the table). Do we have experts in Luxembourgish law around? L.tak (talk) 19:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

In the edit history I replied: Yes its "only" advice - but it is unlikely the committee report will ignore the advice - so we can treat it as a defacto decision being correct at the current time (but subject for later change). Or else Belgium and Netherlands also need their 50% mark replaced by T.B.D. (To Be Decided).

You answered: You add it; then more proof is needed... In NL this is not an issue as only constitution changes go with 66%, nothing else.

Here is my 2nd reply: I take your word for granted on this matter, so I will not ask you to post references to proof it, and can accept we now write "50% or 66.7%" for Luxembourg (to reflect the current uncertainty). In regards of NL, I then however now disagree with your argument that 50% can be kept in the wikitable, because even if it is a fact that "NL only ratifies with 66.7% if it has something to do with constitutional changes", as per your argument, we can still not know what the responsible committee will decide to do when picking the needed majority to pass the bill. If the NL committee have the oppinion that a constitutional change will be needed, then it will not be 50% (as currently estimated by the European Parliament and noted in our wikitable) but the 66.7%. My only point is, that if the criteria for the column now shall be changed only to note the "majority needed as finally picked by the committees", then we also need to note a T.B.D. also for Netherlands and Belgium, as we still await committee reports from those two countries. Until now the approach has been to list the latest official/available advice for "majority needed" in the column. I am ready to support, that we can change it to your new proposal in regards of writing "50% or 66.7%" for Luxembourg with the note below (as we here now have an oppinion from Council of State explicitly stating 66.7%, which contradicts the EPs evaluation that 50% should be sufficient); but if we do it like that I insist also to note a T.B.D. for Netherlands+Belgium on the grounds given above. Can you agree with me on that? Danish Expert (talk) 20:43, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I understand your point on the Netherlands; I will however indicate why I disagree with that matter. The committee can not decide in any way like that because leading is article 67-2 of the constitution stating that a majority (that is in NL: a simple majority of members present) is needed. There are exceptions: constitutional changes (which require twice the consent of both house; the second time with 2/3); and after the objection of a Minister Plenipotentiary (of Aruba, Sint Maarten, Curcao) (3/4 if I am correct) of a Kingdom law (which this one is not). Constitutional challenges are not possible (see here) during the procedure (they are in Sint Maarten, but they do not vote on this one). Furthermore, the advice of the council of state is silent on the matter this time (and other times). All in all there are no indications at all there is a possibility not to have 50%. However, for Luxembourg: it normally has 50%, and there is an advice to have 66%. The discrepancy between those to makes it unclear form me what they will do; and I have no idea why it is unlikely to ignore that advice. I hope that helps; and am open to other sources to get this clear... (and sorry for the proof/prove confusion; I wasn't awake enough...) L.tak (talk) 05:15, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I checked the Belgian constitution, which has indeed several 2/3 majority clauses when responsibilities are shifted or when a law is directly dependent on a contitutional clause. Indeed good to keep the TBD there until we know more or have the definite information regarding this... L.tak (talk) 09:15, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Case settled. Thanks for good input, and your effort to look into the issue. I highly appreciate your contribution. Danish Expert (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

ratification process revisited

I reverted blue haired lawyer's (and an IP editor's) edits on the section, because there's clearly not a consensus on them, and he did not make any comments here before re-reverting to them.

Personally, I don't agree with removing the colours of the names of the countries, because they can immediately identify the status of ratification in a particular country that has not yet ratified the treaty. This feature is not included on the table, and is quite dependent on the way this section will be formed after consensus.

I can agree that plain text is not to be highlighted usually in an encyclopedia, but, I have to argue that this is not plain text, the name of each country is effectively an extension of the table. To avoid highlighted text in the main body of text, we could highlight the country's entry on the table. In my opinion, this is what the highlighted text in the main body stands for.

However, I do again suggest we open a Request for Comments (RFC) section here, so as to reach a conclusive consensus about all the issues that have arisen over this section.

In either case, I would appreciate it if we could all discuss any proposed changes and get feedback on them, before we implement them on this section. Any consensus reached here will probably also affect other articles of EU treaties. Heracletus (talk) 06:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree to preserve the previous use of color status for country names to easily map the ratification progress, and agree with your argument that the "name of each country is effectively an extension of the table". As the very descrete color status of "country names" actually serves an important/valuable navigation purpose for readers, I think it is fully justified we can continue this practise. The technical argument supporting our practise is of course, that we are not coloring plain "article text", but only some short "list point titles" which serve the purpose of providing a structural element to the article (giving the readers a fast overview). In the alternative, one could also convert the list format into a wikitable with two columns (named respectively Country and Ratification status/events), and then colour the background according to the same code. In my point of view, the current "list format" is however much more simple and pleasent to the eye (as a dominant disco light of background colours in my point of view becomes a little too much). So I vote to keep it as it is. :-) Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 15:58, 30 December 2012 (UTC)