The Amsterdam Treaty continues Maastricht's transformation of the nature of EU citizenship. Individual rights derived largely from our roles as consumer, worker or economic agent in the marketplace, become rights arising from common Union citizenship.
And in its determination to bring the EU back to the ordinary citizen, the treaty strengthens the Union's commitment to a number of key people-friendly issues - the fight against discrimination, racism and xenophobia, the environment, consumer rights, and freedom of information.
The treaty makes the requirement of the member-states to adhere to democratic standards explicit and they become a precondition of membership. And it contains for the first time provisions for suspending the membership rights of states which are in "serious and persistent breach" of fundamental principles of democracy, liberty and the rule of law.
The message to the countries of the former communist states is clear - although we want you to join the EU, we don't quite trust you all yet.
Extending the role of the European Court of Justice significantly, the treaty also explicitly confirms the court's traditional willingness to comply with the legal standards set by the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights. But fear of the complexities involved in a conflict of legal jurisdictions has prevented agreement on strictly committing the Union itself to the European Convention on Human Rights.
The treaty strengthens the legal competence of the Union to actively oppose discrimination "based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation".
The Union is specifically empowered to adopt rules preventing discrimination on grounds of nationality and the treaty reinforces the provisions on discrimination against women at work and insists the Commission must keep equality issues in the mainstream of its programmes.
The treaty also copper-fastens the right of member-states to take positive action to promote women or men if they are under-represented in the workforce. It says: "The principle of equal treatment shall not prevent any member-state from maintaining or adopting measures providing for specific advantage in order to make it easier for the under-represented sex to pursue a vocational activity or to prevent or compensate for disadvantages in professional careers".
The Union strengthens its commitment to the environment by including "balanced and sustainable development" as a principal objective and requires the integration of this objective into all Union policies. The Commission is also required to make environmental assessment studies of all projects with a significant economic impact.
At the insistence of Sweden and Denmark, if member-states wish to introduce or maintain specific higher standards of environmental protection, contrary to harmonised internal market rules, they will be able to do so if they can convince the Commission they are scientifically justified.
