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The Conference on the Future of Europe, launched by the European Union in 2021, aimed to engage citizens in a dialogue and serve as a key platform for EU institutions to discuss the future direction of the European Union. Hungary actively participated in the process, and the objective of our study is to shed light on the contributions of Hungarian citizens and the conclusions drawn from them. The study also explores the post-Conference landscape, tracing the evolution of the proposals arising directly or indirectly from the debates on the future of Europe, with a reflection to their possible implications on the revision of the EU Treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Almost all nations are currently parties to the UN international drug control conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988; treaties that taken together form what can be usefully called the global drug prohibition regime. Despite interpretative tensions around some national policy approaches that deviate from punitive prohibition, the inherent flexibility within the conventions permit members of the regime some policy space at the national level. Should they wish to do so, however, states already pushing at the limits of the regime would only be able to expand such national policy space via an alteration in their relationship to the UN drug control conventions and the prohibitive norm at the regime''s core. Method: The article applies an international relations approach, including examples from the UN system in general and other issue areas in particular, to explore how the formation and operation of a group, or groups, of like-minded nations may offer a route towards some form of substantive treaty revision. Results: Although common in other areas of international concern, the varied nature of dissatisfaction with the prohibitive ethos of the regime combines with the character of drug policy to generate specific dilemmas for the like-minded group (LMG) approach. Nonetheless, within the current policy environment it is plausible to foresee the construction of groupings around a number of themes: traditional and religious drug use, cannabis regulation, technical issues relating to inconsistencies within the conventions and UN system-wide coherence. These potential groups provide the basis for a number of possible scenarios for treaty revision and highlight essential commonalities of approach that should be considered whatever the route towards reform. Conclusion: The increasingly obvious weaknesses within, tensions around and negative consequences of the regime in its current form make a recalibration of the UN drug control conventions via an LMG approach an enterprise worthy of time and effort. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers the author's insights on the changes that must be made on the Hague Convention on Taking Evidence Abroad. The author says that the convention was expected to solve the problems related to taking evidence overseas, but the U.S. Supreme Court has viewed it as optional at best and has ordered trial courts to apply its specified methods. He recommends that the convention be rewritten to make it the first option for taking evidence abroad and treaty signatories must accept it.

Information about the summit between the Supreme Court of the United States and the European Court of Justice held in Spring, 2007 is presented. Topics include the interpretation of the judges on the components of the international law, objectivity of constitutional law and protection of fundamental rights of the treaty members. The summit featured various American and European justices including Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Chief Justice John Marshall.

In the 1991 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), conflicts over social policy endangered the whole treaty reform package. The path-breaking innovations that finally occurred (although initially for eleven members only) regarding both competence and procedures made the Maastricht Treaty a turning point for European social policy. For these reasons, the Maastricht Social Agreement represents an important case for testing the proposition that dynamics beyond power and intergovernmental bargaining can play a decisive role in EU reform. The insight that both a Euro-level process of preference formation and Euro-level actors mattered here indicates that state-of-the-art research must pay attention to such dynamics as potentially relevant factors in all instances of EU treaty reform. EU reform, even at the constitutional level of treaty change and even in formal IGCs, can be much less 'intergovernmental' than the name 'Intergovernmental Conference' suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the views of the Germans regarding on the new proposed indemnity from the Treaty of Versailles which was changed to 30 years rather than 42. In this connection, German ministers are invited for a conference in London on February 28, 1921 to meet Allied ministers. If the German official attitude is predicted by the comments of German newspapers, a little chance is seen that the terms be accepted where one describes the proposal as an insane one.