Brussels blog

Uwe Corsepius, EU Council's secretary general

UPDATE: According to a British official, the UK has today been invited to participate in the treaty negotiations, a significant shift that will allow London to weigh in on some of the most sensitive issues to be discussed, including whether EU institutions will enforce the new pact.

Senior officials from European national finance ministries chatted last night in the first informal negotiations on the highly-touted new intergovernmental treaty to govern the region’s economic policy, though diplomats say little substance was discussed.

Ahead of the talks, however, Uwe Corsepius, the new secretary general of the European Council, sent out a four-page letter to negotiators in an attempt to set a roadmap for how the talks will proceed – and we at Brussels Blog got our mitts on it.

Significantly, Corsepius writes that he wants negotiations completed by the end of January “so as to allow the signature of the agreement at the beginning of March”. Officials said this is why a new informal EU summit is tentatively scheduled for early February. A first draft of the treaty text could be done by tomorrow, or early next week at the latest.

Corsepius’ letter includes a nine-point “Annex on Practical Arrangements” for the treaty negotiations, including the fact that the negotiating “working party” will be headed by Thomas Wieser, the Austrian who is replacing Italian Vittorio Grilli as head of the euro working group.

According to the letter, the working party sounds like it’s going to be rather big – though no Brits allowed:

Together with the delegates of the member states whose currency is the euro and of other member states who have indicated their readiness to participate in the process and the possibility to join the agreement, representatives of the Commission and of the European Central Bank will be invited to attend the meetings, as well as delegates of the European Parliament. The Council secretariat and the cabinet of the president of the European Council will be represented at the meetings. Delegations may comprise up to three members.

Some back-of-the-envelope estimate puts that at nearly 100 people involved. For its part, the European Parliament has already announced its representatives: German Elmar Brok of the centre-right European Peoples Party, Italy’s Roberto Gualtieri of the centre-left Socialists & Democrats, and Belgian Guy Verhofstadt of the centrist Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

The first formal meeting of the team is to be held next week, Corsepius writes.