In this interview excerpt, Joseph Weyland, Permanent Representative to the European Communities from 1984 to 1991 and Chairman of the Group of Personal Representatives of the Foreign Ministers of the European Communities from 1 January to 30 June 1991, shares his memories of the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Maastricht under the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union from January to June 1991. He describes the work and the working method of the Group of Personal Representatives, emphasising the assistance of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Communities and particularly its Legal Service. Finally, he discusses the European Commission’s proposals and the differences of opinion between the Commission and the Luxembourg Presidency.

In this interview excerpt, Joseph Weyland, Permanent Representative to the European Communities from 1984 to 1991 and Chairman of the Group of Personal Representatives of the Foreign Ministers of the European Communities from 1 January to 30 June 1991, discusses the reactions to the submission on 17 April 1991 of the Luxembourg non-paper, a series of draft treaty articles with a view to the establishment of a political union. He also describes the continuation of the work of the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union under the Luxembourg Presidency with the submission on 18 June 1991 of a reworked treaty text entitled ‘Draft Treaty on European Union’ in the run-up to the Luxembourg European Council on 28 and 29 June 1991.

In this interview excerpt, Joseph Weyland, Permanent Representative to the European Communities from 1984 to 1991 and Member of the Group of Personal Representatives of the Foreign Ministers of the European Communities during the 1991 Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union, discusses the initiative taken by the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the European Communities to submit an alternative version, on 30 September 1991, to the draft submitted by the Luxembourg Presidency. The rejection of this proposal was seen as the ‘Black Monday’ of the 1991 Dutch Presidency.

In this interview excerpt, Joseph Weyland, Permanent Representative to the European Communities from 1984 to 1991 and Chairman of the Group of Personal Representatives of the Foreign Ministers of the European Communities from 1 January to 30 June 1991, recalls the origins of the new institutional architecture agreed on at the 1991 Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union. This structure is generally represented as a Greek temple with three pillars: the supranational Community pillar and the second and third pillars which are intergovernmental in nature.