The term supranational is of recent origin and is used to describe the type of treaty structure developed originally by six western European states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
But a permanent court, operating wisely within a treaty structure that the United States can embrace, holds the promise of adding to the world's arsenal against human rights violations.
Provided that we maintain the separate arrangements for CFSP, and some aspects of justice and home affairs, I would be content to see all of these provisions merged into a single treaty structure.There are two main arguments raised against an EU constitution.
Mr. Van Rompuy, always the arch-pragmatist, is asking for something less than a treaty change but for structures that are more rigorous than some countries probably would like.
Though the Union has enacted its Lisbon Treaty, which created new structures and a more powerful foreign policy chief in Ms. Ashton, implementation has been slow and at times chaotic.
That explains the treaty's curious pillar structure.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia has called for a new European security treaty, arguing that the current structures are outdated.
And he backed David Cameron's point this morning, that Europe needs treaty change to improve the institutional structure of the eurozone.
"The Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is the pillar of the structure in the Middle East," said Edward P. Djerejian, a former American ambassador to Israel and Syria.
And that none of this would be covered by the, essentially the mutually -- the mutual deterrence structure of the A.B.M. treaty and all the things we've done since then.
