Talk:European Fiscal Compact/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

False/inaccurate reports from the European Parliament

The 2 reports are mainly used in our article as a general reference in the ratification tables "majority needed" column. As I already noted four months ago in the above talkpage chapter, they were found only to be correct in 90% of the times in regards of "majority needed" info. Now I also has to raise a warning flag for their provided "ratification status" info, which I have also found to be highly inaccurate. I had hoped it would be improved by time - but it has not improved! Both reports made the mistake to mix up the Belgian government's submission of Croatias accession treaty to the Senate on 20 Noevember with the Fiscal Compact. They claim that the treaty was not submitted in Finland (during a time when it was). For a long time included old political comments (i.e. the Maltese February 2012 commment was only deleted in December 2012; despite calling for a deletion at least on 1 October 2012 when their ratification approach changed). The reports did also not discover that Slovakia actually submitted the treaty in October for the 1st reading and then again in November for the 2nd+3rd reading. In top of that, I also found a forrest of other false reports during the past 4 months.

Reason why I highlight this here at the talkpage, is that we still have them listed in the article, and that I want to highlight you should read the reports with extreme sceptisism - without trusting their info unless documented by a primary reference. The way I personally use the reports, is that I read each update of them and then go on to check if a primary source can document what they claim. To be frank I am very close to delete them permanently from the article (and only keep them as a talkpage source) due to the confusion they create on several issues. But on the other hand at least the second report (despite of only being 90% correct) at the same time also feature some nice links to each state's constitution (including a list of the relevant paragraphs to be aware of), so I did not kill it yet. Just be carefull when you read it - you can not trust its info unless you first find a primary source confirming what it claims. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 20:02, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

My problem with these reports is that it is not easy to find the newest version available, as the internal website search doesn't work very well. For example, there's a newer version of the table available, which is on a different directory than the last one. In this one, the Belgian submission mistake (and most others) has been fixed. However, the entry on Slovakia is a bit outdated.

It should be noted here, though, that these are internal parliament "notes", not even official reports over the ratification process and thus their integrity is not very significant for the parliament. They are also not regularly publicly updated. They usually catch up to the actual situation after a month or two, at the latest.

The main issue as always is how reliable are reliable sources; if a well-known source that is almost universally accepted as reliable publishes something should that always be considered as reliable information? And, aren't primary sources the most reliable ones in certain fields? Heracletus (talk) 03:12, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. The only good news contained in the new "first report" version you linked to from 7 January 2013, is that they corrected the Belgium mistake. But unfortunately it is still just showing the ratification status as of October 2012 for other states with pending ratifications. It provides an incorrect (or 3 months old) ratification status for Malta + Luxembourg + Poland + Slovakia + Sweden. So it should definately not be used as a source in our quest for seeking updates on ratification status. As it in some cases also provide mis-guided info on "majority needed" for ratification (i.e. on France+Latvia), its existence as a source for our ratification table might be short lived. As the document is subject to ongoing updates, I will however still give it a chance (but only for a few more months) to see if it ultimately will correct its reporting mistakes on the "majority needed" info for all states having completed ratification. Otherwise I propose we only use the "second report" for the "majority needed" column (as it currently feature 100% correct info for all states having completed ratification). We shall see. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 07:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

On a sidenote, here is a direct link to be used when we search for updated versions of the second report. Next update will likely happen 21 January, and the link will be uploaded in this meeting date subfolder. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 09:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Czech Republic note

My updated formulation from yesterday, where I put the Czech situation into a 100% perfect and correct context, has today been reverted (with the argument that the listed references do not support the formulation). I admit indeed to have stretched some of the points to a small degree. However, this was needed in order to present the readers for the correct context. Now after the formulation has been adjusted, the context appear wrong (as if Petr Necas has personal support for Czech to accede). The truth is that eurosceptic Prime Minister Petr Nečas (ODS) only support that Czech Republic accedes to the treaty if a political consensus between all parties in the Czech parliament first can be reached on how to ratify such an accession. His party ODS call for a referendum as the one and only ratification path to follow. This is not supported by the other governmental party TOP09 and in particular not by the Social Democrats in the opposition. Currently the ODS stance on this issue bloc for any accesion. This situation might however change after the next parliamentary election in May 2014, as the current opinion polls show a major support for the Social Democrats, which leader Bohuslav Sobotka has pronounced that Czech Republic should accede as soon as possible (without a referendum). The written context is clear if you carefully read and combine all the provided references in the Czech note. I am out of time to search for new references for the matter, but if any of you have time, I invite you to do it, as I think we need the note to show the correct context about the true position of the current Prime Minister Petr Necas (ODS). Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 10:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Out of pure luck my 5s google search came up with this reference supporting my claim above. So I will now go on to implement it in the note (despite not having the time). :-) Danish Expert (talk) 11:15, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

The reason I reverted was because none of the sources supported the claim that ODS has made a referendum a precondition for accession. While you may believe this is "100% perfect and correct", it still needs to be sourced. Also, you need to be very careful when you "carefully read and combine all the provided references" not to WP:SYNTHESIS conclusions not explicitly stated in the sources. Your new source is helpful, but be sure to only report what it actually says: that Necas "favours holding a referendum on the 'fiscal compact,' but is waiting for a final draft". TDL (talk) 11:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but you can also find a Wikipedia policy outlining that you should not only list/formulate a referenced line into full compliance with the provided source, but also make sure that it is formulated in a way so that reading the pre-existing Wikipedia section's paragraph in its entirety can still be done without the overall message provided by the already existing lines in the paragraph being confused/destroyed. To say it short, the way the old version of the Czech note was formulated it accidently implied there was no political difference at all between opinions of the existing PM Necas and opposition leader Sobotka on when/how/if the Fiscal Compact should be ratified. I clarified this situation at first, by denoting that Necas wanted a referendum and that Sobotka wanted to join straight away without a referendum. You then responded by reverting. I then replied by adding two additional references for the referendum situation, fully supporting that I had not reported something wrong. It was OK that you called for additional refs. My only point is, that another time when you question the facts in any of my contributions please do so by adding the {{cn}} tags, because in 99.99% of the cases I never add something wrong, and will be able to find additional sources if you think it is needed. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 11:57, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

No, the problem is that you often either missunderstand or missrepresent what the sources are actually saying. For instance, you wrote: "would only support the country to join the Fiscal Compact, if this was first explicitly approved by a referendum" and the article you sourced this to says: "would like to see the matter decided in a national referendum". This isn't an accurate reflection of the source. I "would like" a million dollars for my old, beatup car. That doesn't mean that I "would only" accept a million dollars for it. Two different statements entirely.

As for the rest, please see WP:BURDEN. If you want to add something to the article, it's your responsibility to source it. I try to keep as much as I can that is sourced. However, there's WP:NODEADLINE so if you can't find a source now there's no hurry to add the content. TDL (talk) 04:33, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

If the article's info is found not to comply with reality, we should correct it so that it do reflect reality! Or do you really prefer to have an encyclopedic article telling a wrong incorrect story that do not reflect reality? Yes, the previous linies individually matched the contained explicit info in the noted reference. But when reading the lines all together in our wikipedia articles paragraph, then the wrong story was accidently provided to the reader. I sorted out the problem by reformulating the text, so that it matched reality 1:1. If a single reference has used a specific formulation you should not always trust/valuate such a formulation as the one and only truth. Please also check if the formulation match the story reported by other available references. In many cases you will accidently report the wrong reality if you only reflect a story based on the formulation by 1 specific source. Many sources themself are not formulated 100% correct. Instead of critisizing all what I do, you should really start to appreciate and applaud that I help to get reality reflected in our article. Once again, you were right to ask for additional references for the verification of my reformulated lines about the referendum. I then provided you with 2 new references that did so. The second happens to say, that the governments cabinet voted on 19 January about what to do with the Fiscal Compact (where TOP09 was voted down by ODS+Public Affairs), deciding that a referendum should be called (either as a single referendum or a combined euro referendum) if the government in its sitting term should sign the Fiscal Compact. So when I write "ODS would only support the country to join the Fiscal Compact, if this was first explicitly approved by a referendum", then this is the one and only truth and 100% backed by the reference. By the way, I can also tell you that it is the one and only truth, that if the referendum had been called ODS+Public Affairs would both recommend the Czech people to vote NO to the treaty. The only reason why the government did not launch the referendum, was because TOP09 categorically refused to vote for such a proposal if it was ever submitted to the parliament. Please note, that I did not use this exact formulation in our wikipedia articles paragraph, as I did not have a source with this exact formulation. But this is the truth, and you should really be able to grasp that point just by reading the link I provided here for the second new reference. Despite not being formulated explicit this is implied by the reference, and so it is not incorrect if we imply the same in the paragraph (without writing it explicit). As a minimum we should at least avoid to imply something that is direct opposite and not matching the reality (which was done by the previous formulation of the note). I have now hugely improved the note, and deserve only praise of having helped you with that. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 11:48, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

All hail the great Danish Expert!

Yes, but once again you're either missrepresenting or missunderstanding the sources. The link you point to says: "would prefer to see the matter decided in a national referendum" and "provisionally endorsed a national referendum". This is entirely different than saying they "would only support the country to join the Fiscal Compact, if this was first explicitly approved by a referendum". Your attempts to decide what is "implied" by the sources is WP:OR. While, I doni't doubt that you think that your version is the WP:TRUTH, as WP:V clearly states: "Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it". If you disagree with my revision, I'm happy to discuss it with you here but please stop adding this unsourced speculation until there is a consensus for it. I've tried to retain as much of the material that you've added as can be sourced, but if you disagree with my revision you are welcome to revert to the status quo revision circa January 13 while we discuss the issue further. TDL (talk) 18:13, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I can accept the latest reformulation you did 18:23 18 January, as you in that version was more carefull to maintain the major points I had added. For the remaining minor disagreements about use of some single words, we are obviously right now having a borderline discussion about when we should be "reporting slaves" of the reference's explicit formulation (of occationally some randomly selected words by a journalist in a single line) or adhere to the implied main message by the reference. In example I wrote:

"the situation is likely to enter a deadlock at least until the next parliamentary election"

while the supplied reference in its lead paragraph wrote:

"The question whether or not the country should join the emerging EU fiscal union has divided Czech politicians and appears to be fraught with problems. While one governing party is in favour of an emphatic “yes”, and the country’s eurosceptic president [along with the two other governing parties] have already voiced an emphatic “no”, everything points to the fact that Czechs will continue to sit on the fence for as long as possible."

The simple fact that the journalist used the words "EU Fiscal Union" is a great example that some of his selected words are not necessarily formulated 100% accurate, as we both know that what he really meant and referred to was the international "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union" - also known as the "European Fiscal Compact". This message (and the rest of his points) becomes 100% clear when reading the entire article and not just a single line. Personally I understand your argumentation and the general call for edits to be true to the selected wording from a reference. On the other hand, I am also quiet sure you understand my call that at the same time while being carefull not to reference a wording that the journalist did not say (or intend to say), we should also be carefull to avoid just to slavicly report the exact same randomly selected wording by one of the lines in a reference. It is okay (and actually preferred) that we read the entire article and report its message when being read in its entirety. Sometimes if you just cherry pick the wording of a single stand-alone line, it will be taken out of context, and its meaning becomes different if it stands alone. According to my experience so far with all the EU-related articles at wikipedia we unfortunately have a forrest of wrong info and missing info in the majority of them, that are much more serious than the small details about wording you and I now use plenty of time to discuss. Now when both of us clearly have expressed our points of view and agreed on a compromised formulation for the Czech note, I think it is time to move on and start prioritizing doing the work to add some of the missing info in our article. Since December I have along my work to update ratification status, also made a personal to-do list of important things to add to the article. In example it is of huge importance that we add a column displaying all current country-specific MTO's to the "Fiscal compliance table". I have found a reference for that, but it all takes time (and currently awaits I first complete some of the other stuff still standing on my to-do list). No offence meant, but I think both of us should really try to use less time to discuss "wikipedia policies" in general, and dedicate more of our precious time to improve the article. Danish Expert (talk) 11:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The term "EU Fiscal Union" was used quite often back then before the treaty had actually been signed, so it was certainly not inaccurate. Of course the "Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union" didn't even exist when this article was published and it didn't become universally known as the "European Fiscal Compact" untill much later. (Hell, this article was originally titled European Fiscal Union before being moved [1])

I certainly agree that we need not repeat the specific words that a source says. However, the issue is that you often see "implied" messages in articles which are far from obvious. It seems that you think that you know what the truth is. You find sources which say something similar and use it to support your more extreme claims. In the example above, you wrote that "would only support the country to join the Fiscal Compact, if this was first explicitly approved by a referendum" when the source says "would like to see the matter decided in a national referendum", "would prefer to see the matter decided in a national referendum" and "provisionally endorsed a national referendum". Your text obviously misrepresents what the sources actually say, and goes much farther. I simply changed the text to "suggested that the treaty should be approved by a referendum". That's not a matter of cherry picking or slavishly following the specific words chosen, it's a matter of reporting what the sources actually say and not what one might image the sources could be implying. TDL (talk) 23:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It is quiet funny that you claim an "extreme difference" existed between my formulation and the one used by the reference. Yes, there was a minor difference, but it was far from extreme. And once again I am sorry to say that in this particular case my formulation match reality 1:1, although I admit it did only match the formulation of the provided source by 98%. If you doubt my claims so heavily, then please be my guest to search for additional references. Then you will find further proof for all my points written here at the talkpage. My main point however only was, that it was important for the note to highlight that the existing PM preferred a referendum solution while the Social democratic party and TOP09 was opposed to such a thing. In the previous formulation you made and with my two additional provided references this has now been implemented. I accept the current version, and do not boughter to use any more time to document further details about the story. So why do we continue to discuss this topic? I think it is time for both of us to move on with other more important edits. Personally I am now satisfied with how the Czech note is formulated. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 00:29, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

On a sidenote, I can inform you the TSCG title was coined around 1 December 2011, and actually replaced this former title of the treaty in its very first draft phase: International Treaty on a Reinforced Economic Union. As all of my previous edits have revealed, I am one of those annoying guys who happens to know what he talks about (and very seldom have made the mistake to report anything that is direct wrong; as you only have caught me doing on the expirering date for the Icelandic EU negotiation agreement reached between VG and Social Democrats, which I this week accidently -due to a bad google translation of the Icelandic language- thought also was a post election agreement, but as we both could see the next day after reading the follow-up MLB article it was clearly only a pre-election agreement). On that single point I did a mistake. But please do not generalise based only on that. There is no reason to accuse me of being highly wrong or inaccurate at a general level. On the contrary, I am one of the good guys always making high quality edits and greatly help to improve the content on several articles. If you treat me with respect, I will continue to help improve this Fiscal Compact article on various aspects. Alternatively you can also choose to hunt me away with personal attacks, and do all the remaining work yourself. It is really your own choise. I am starting to get a bit tired. Other points on the current to-do list (beside of adding the MTO column) is that the "History chapter" is heavily inaccurate/misguiding on several issues, and that we still need a short country note formulated for UK. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 01:50, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

See, this response is a classic example of you misunderstanding text. My statement: "it's a matter of reporting what the sources actually say". Your response: "If you doubt my claims so heavily" and "You have no reason to accuse me of being highly wrong or inaccurate at a general level" and "hunt me away with personal attacks". I understand that English isn't your mother tongue, but words have very specific meanings and these meanings often seem to get lost on you. I didn't express any doubt about the accuracy of what you'd written. I didn't accuse you of being wrong. All I said is that the sources didn't back up what you'd written. You can lecture me all you like about how your edits are "100% perfect and correct", but at the end of the day that's irrelevant. All that matters is whether you can back your claims up with sources or not.

The same happened during the dispute over the referendum. You say your text matched the sources 98%, but when I tried to make it match 100% you reverted me twice to restore the version that only matched 98%. How is misrepresenting the sources helpful?

If you don't like your work being criticized, then wikipedia probably isn't a very good place for you. You need to be able to accept that people are going to disagree with you, and not take it personally. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean that they're trying to "hunt me away with personal attacks". I've tried to be very patient with you, and explain to you the rules about how wikipedia works. However, you don't seem care and just ignore the rules whenever you don't like them. My suggestion would be to spend some time reading wikipedia's policies, particularly Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. If you don't understand something, you could consider Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user.

As for your sidenote, what's the relevance of this? Who said anything about the TSCG name not being around before then? No me. It seems you've misunderstood my words again. We were discussing its "nickname". You said referring to it as the "EU fiscal union" was not correct, but I told you that the "fiscal compact" nickname had yet to be standardized by then. You can find plenty of RS from Dec 2011 or Jan 2012 which refer to it as a "fiscal union" ([2], [3] [4], [5], [6]) so it's no less accurate a nickname than "fiscal compact". TDL (talk) 03:06, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I know all the Wikipedia policies you refer me to - before you refer me. In the past 3 years I have actively contributed with good quality edits, and you were the only person to accuse me of not understanding the policies (and all the rest you seem to imply). You should stop acting like a better knowing preacher/teacher. In particular because you do not always yourself understand or obey to Wikipedia's written policy in a 100% firmly correct manner (and sometimes even use it in ways it was not intended to be). Sure you are good referring to it. But you also have a talent to twist the debate and for unknown reasons your replies to me lately have a tendency of becoming more and more personal with all kind of implied attacks. I welcome to have grown-up debates on an informed level at Wikipedia, and of course also welcome that other editors change my edits if they find something in them which they do not find correct (or otherwise want to improve). For strange and unknown reasons, it appear you have decided to put me into a wrong category of editors "who do not act correct on a general level". I am willing to assume good faith, and on the contrary always have treated you friendly and with respect. But what do I get in return? Apparently you do not like me on any level (for whatever strange reason), and is on an ongoing quest to try and annoy me as much as possible or hunt me away. As I stated earlier in another of our latest debates, I have no problem at all with you in regards of how you behave or act in the Wikipedia article space itself. I think both our contributions on a general level have greatly helped to improve a lot of articles. I only made a friendly call here at the talkpage, that I think your way of handling the talkpage debate (and in particular your implied tone in the debate) could be better and more friendly towards me. The choice of how to continue is yours alone. I have already made my points and moved on. Danish Expert (talk) 11:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Malta

We seem to be outdated on Malta, stating in the section above the ratification table taht a governmental decree will be used; stating below that the parliament will be dissolved (last week), but that ratification will take place after elections. I don't know too much about Maltese politics (I guess the decree is simply outdated and that the law is now on hold until a new government comes, but..), so can someone get it a bit more consistent? L.tak (talk) 14:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I can see TDL has deleted my 1 line making the exact status of how far the parliament had treated the "ratification motion" prior of the parliament being dissolved and elections called. The status is that the parliament is still in an ongoing process, where they since 2 October 2012 at 6 meetings have been debating the treaty and ratification motion clause by clause. They have not yet voted on anything in the parliament. On your request, I will now reinstate the valuable status line that TDL on his own hand decided to delete in December 2012. Danish Expert (talk) 14:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the deleted text (didn't see it). My main point is the inconsistency with the text above the table that still speaks of the decree; should that simply be removed? L.tak (talk) 15:34, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The text above never outlined a governmental decree for Malta but only for Cyprus. So it is perfectly consistent. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 16:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

ah, those small countries.... ;-) L.tak (talk) 16:14, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The information about the motion is no longer relevant, as the new parliament will (most probably) set a new agenda, along with it being a new legislature and so on. For some unknown reasons related to original research and my common sense, I do expect the budget to be among the very first laws submitted to the new parliamentary composition. Whatever will happen to the motion is ...unknown? Hence the half yellow, half red colour. It would be quite weird if the parliament kept discussing the draft laws and motions submitted to its previous legislating session and those were not dropped or re-introduced by the new government. So, I think we can expect a new section here [7] under the title "Twelfth legislature (2013-)", with new sittings, new agendas and so on. The reason this has not happened yet is that of course, the present parliament is still sitting for the odd cases of Malta going into war, tsunamis hitting Malta, meteorites falling on Malta and such (article 76 of the constitution of Malta[8]) before the elections happen. Common sense... is original research of course.

So, why keep all this information, as to when it was debated and such? 85.179.46.184 (talk) 19:44, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with the IP. The only info that DE restored which I deleted was: "with the first out of three readings starting on 3 October 2012" and "Since then it has been debated clause by clause, in eight parliamentary sittings -with the last one at 5 November, and it is still listed on the open agenda for upcoming further debate." Who cares how many days it has been debated on? I don't see how any of this is really significant. (And to suggest that you restored it on L.tak's request is rather misleading since it has nothing to do with the OP.) TDL (talk) 23:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The normal procedure in all European parliaments when a sitting term is abrupted due to early elections with a parliament getting dissolved, is that one of the first actions of the new parliament after the election is to transfer those ongoing legislation procedures not being finished in the previous term. Until we know what the new parliament+government will do, I think it makes sence that we keep the old info about how far the previous procedure has evolved. To be honest, I think the new parliament will continue and complete the parliaments initiated procedure for ratification. Please note they only deal with a simple ratification law here, and not the more complicated process about the design of the implementation law. So there is absolutely no reason why they should nullify the previous draft law and start all over again. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 00:04, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the old procedure has some value, but that does not include the quantitative data (who cares how many hours it has been debated, as long as we know what "gates have been passed": is it in parliament?, have they voted? etc). So I would agree with keeping that info out (even if I am not convinced that a formal action is needed to carry over the procedure from one term of parliament to the other; I know for a fact that is not the case in "all European parliaments", but know nothing about Malta) L.tak (talk) 10:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I did not intend to clutter it up, and you are correct that it can be cooked down to less details on a few points (ie. removing the number of meetings). However, I suggest we still keep the info that: The parliamentary debate started 3 October clause by clause, but was not completed during the subsequent parliamentary sittings and remained as a topic for the open agenda at the time when the parliament got dissolved and the early election was called. In regards of transferring ongoing law proposals to the next term, I accidently wrote in my reply above that it was "standard procedure" to transfer all ongoing proposals in most European parliaments. What I intended to write was that most European parliaments have a "standard procedure" for situations where early unexpected elections are called, allowing the next parliament to transfer previously debated law proposals into the newly opened term -and that the newly elected parliament do not necessarily have to start all over again. We can not know for sure what the next Maltese parliament will choose to do. By using common sence and logic, I think it is however more likely to expect they transfer/adopt the ongoing motion as something to be completed in the parliaments upcomming new term after the election, rather than nullifying the previous motion and the work already being done. BTW, if we should cook down the Maltese note any further, I will suggest we remove the second line explaining what the Maltese government initially intended to do in February 2012. This can be removed without harming the note's informational value. Removing the direct status line and the link explaining how far the current motion have progressed in the old parliament, would not be good. I think we should await to see what happens after the election, before we consider to update/remove that particulair line. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 12:03, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Good reply, and, from my point of view what you suggest is quite acceptable. However, if someone disagrees, you could just comment out these sentences, so that we preserve them until everything clears out. Heracletus (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm OK with including a boiled down summary, but I'd say the same thing in half as many words: "The parliamentary debate started on 3 October, but was not completed prior to the House being dissolved ahead of early elections." TDL (talk) 22:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Repetitive information in the "Ratification process (for late ratifiers)" section

Why include the repetitive info for states that have completed ratification? All of the notable bits are included elsewhere (either in the table or the constitutional challenges section). While you might find it interesting, the date when the "detailed analysis report" was submitted isn't notable. Wikipedia isn't an WP:INDISCRIMINATE collection of information. This non-notable content is only WP:PRIMARY sourced. If no secondary sources find it notable enough to mention, then neither should we. Also, this article is WP:TOOLONG as it is, so we shouldn't be bloating it with redundant and non-notable content. TDL (talk) 09:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Reason why I think the descriptive "political ratification process" points should be kept, is because they are not just redundant info, but some fine supplements to the main info provided by the wikitable above, as they carry an interesting description of how the exact political process was in each of the "late ratifying countries". In example, in order to understand the complicated Irish process, we really need this extra point below to clarify the situation. In regards of Romania, it is also an interesting note for many readers, that their constitution call for all EU treaties to be passed by a joint dual-chamber 2/3 majority vote while the intergovernmental treaty is passed normaly by both individual chambers, and perhaps some Romanian wikipedians can also help us to clarify why the country used five months to deposit (i.e. it could either be court troubles, or the situation with their president being tempoarily suspended). I also think the "Submitted date" adds info to the reader by shedding light on, if the slow ratification in the mentioned country was only due to a traditionally complicated and long ratification process (i.e. as we normally have in Belgium), or perhaps had something to do with the government just being extremely slow to submit the ratification draft law to the parliament.

I can however also understand and accept you concern, that we should also limit the length of it, and only keep info that covers notable aspects. So I am ready to accept we can cook some of it down (i.e. removing the date+link for the French governments ratification recommendation). Would you be ready to accept keeping it, if we cook it? :-) Danish Expert (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I'm ok with keeping details of the ratification procedure, ie for Romania explaining why a simple majority was sufficient. I just don't see the point of repeating the dates that are already covered in the table. How about moving the details on the ratification procedure to a footnote? TDL (talk) 08:02, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

We already have the important "declaration footnote" (which I btw applaud you for adding), but I feel it would be too much to have 9 additional footnotes listed along. So I still prefer to have a sub-chapter with the info instead. To ellaborate a bit more on my argument/idea, the Ratification process (status and developments) subchapter currently only cover a full explonatory description for "late ratifiers" (being defined as those countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later). To make this point even more clear to the reader, I am ready to accept we can rename the sub-chapter to: "Ratification process for late ratifiers". IMHO it is notable enough to be kept permanently as a subchapter in the article. Currently the chapter has the function both to map the "ratification status" and to explain "ratification developments". At the point of time where all countries have ratified, the idea is to remove the "colored ratification status" but to keep the description why the country was a "late ratifier". In France, it was mainly due to the presidential election and subsequent demands by Hollande only to ratify the Fiscal Compact if the EU summit first agreed to sign a "Growth pact" (this fact is by the way mentioned by the reference I already added to the text, mentioning this point as one of the main reasons why the French government was ready to recommend the parliament to ratify -despite the president having argued differently during the presidential election). In Netherlands the delay was due to the fact that only a "provisionary government" ruled the country since April and the new fully functional government only being formed by the end of October (after elections). On the other hand, I am ready to accept your point, that a full step-wise description of the political ratification process will not be needed for each of the listed "late ratifier" countries (because once the country completed its ratification, nobody cares about the intermediate stepping dates). So I am ready to accept we remove that part of the description for most of the countries in the subchapter, but still not for countries like Ireland and Belgium, where we really need to keep a full process description in order for readers to understand their complicated and lengthy "ratification procedure". Danish Expert (talk) 08:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I have now implemented my counter proposal outlined above into the article. I kept your footnotes dealing with explonatory info about changed/special voting majority being required, as I agree with you, that footnotes are indeed better suited for this specific info. But as explained by my argument above, I still kept the "late ratifier" info for those 50% of the countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later, although now with a new more focused sub-chapter title and introduction lines, and the country specific info is now also cooked down to a more focused angle answering the quiestion: "why the ratification took so long?". What I refer to right now, is of course so far only the info listed for France+Romania. I intend also to re-write the other countries into the same structure, but only when they have completed the political approval. I hope you like the new structure. Personally I think the structure+focus is far better than before. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 14:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

You make a good point, and I agree that if there are sources which explain why a particular state took longer to ratify the treaty (ie France's election) this is notable. Your rewrite of France looks much better, however I still don't think we should include the redundant info (ie the last sentence.) As for Romania, the note really doesn't explain why ratification was delayed, so I don't see the relevance of it. TDL (talk) 00:18, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I accept your removal of the slightly redundant last French sentence. But only when the subchapter has been fully transformed not to carry any "color marked ratification status" (or at least: we have to wait for a majority of countries to turn green). Problem is, that in the current "intermediate state" the list works both with the purpose of "mapping exact ratification status" and "explaining reasons for late ratifications for slowest ratifiers", and reading through the list it might confuse some readers (not paying notice to the meaning of the green color) to believe the country perhaps still have open ratification steps. In that light, I think it is okay to keep the last slightly redundant line stating that "after completion of political approval the deposit of ratification instruments happened X/X/2012". So I have reinstated it again. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

In regards of Romania, I have managed to dig up some internet articles explaining, that the parliament temporarily suspended the Romanian president from his office arround June 2012. I think it had something to do with a corruption case (but cant remember). According to the romanian constitution the parliament can however not remove the president, but has to run a referendum asking the people to push him away. And so they did. Referendum took place in Q3-2012. The president asked all his remaining supporters to boycot the referendum -and so they did. End result was that an overwhelming majority voted for a removal of the president but as the "boycot" at the same time resulted in a turnout percentage below 50%, the referendum result was not declared to be a valid result by the Romanian constitution, and so the president still stays in office. I also found an article descriping, that there was a power struggle between the Prime Minister and Suspended President in regards of who of them should represent the country at the European summit in July 2012, where the constitutional court ruled the "Suspended President" should represent the country but only as observe (without the right to approve/sign anything before after the presidential election has descided whether or not he was still the president). Quiet a drama. Only reason why I have not written anything about it yet, is because I could so far not find a reference with explicit proof that the "temporary presidential suspension" indeed was the rootcause behind the slow Romanian deposit of the ratification instrument. I suspect it was, due to concerns/uncertainty about the binding legality of the suspended presidents signature, but without the reference prooving this was indeed the case, this currently remain to be my own personal speculation. So for a start I just limited myself to write "deposit was delayed for unkown reasons". My hope is some Romanian/other editor at one point of time can help us dig up a good reference, explaining (either explicit/implicit) why the deposit was delayed. In example it would be sufficient enough to me, if we can find a source stating "all official enactment of bills signed by the suspended Romanian president was put on hold, for as long as the president was suspended, causing a delay for new laws to enter into force during this period". Danish Expert (talk) 08:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, that seems reasonable. I can accept keeping the redundant details for the time being, as long as the plan is to remove them eventually. As for Romania, yes I remember the power struggle and attempt to recall the president this summer. When I get a chance, I'll try to see if I can find anything to connect it to the fiscal compact. TDL (talk) 09:16, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. For a start I have now added a short one-liner, noting it could have been a potential delaying issue -but we dont know. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

New objection to the content of the "Ratification process (for late ratifiers)" section

I think that certain points of the "Ratification process (for late ratifiers)" section, as it is now, are completely redundant and absurd. Frankly, I believe that this section was originally used in relevant (European Union treaties') articles to help people quickly identify the (remaining) process needed for a treaty to be ratified in a particular country and also provide the sources of information to update the table (for active editors). Thus, one would read sentences such as: "A relevant bill has not yet been introduced in the parliament.", "Ratification of the treaty, will need a pass by all seven parliaments with simple majority." or "The government submitted a draft law for ratification of the treaty to Riigikogu, on 11 June 2012."

Generally speaking, this is a small section to keep the (remaining) ratification process up to date. This is why it was named "Ratification status", and only contained the countries that had not yet ratified the treaty. It does not and should not go into extensive detail, or list all the remaining or all the past process to ratify the treaty. It should do this in a broad manner, such a sentence of this sort: "The relevant bill has been approved by the Senate and is currently being discussed in (this) Dáil committee". Including all the dates which are already listed in the table and all the stages, even those not included in the table, is clearly too much.

For example, this entry:
"Estonia: The government submitted a draft law for ratification of the treaty to Riigikogu, on 11 June 2012. The draft law passed its first reading on 19 September and final second reading on 17 October, without any MPs voting against/abstaining. The political approval was completed by a presidential assent on 5 November,[48] and the final deposit of the ratification instrument happened on 5 December 2012.[2]",
only serves to add to the article the date the bill was introduced for ratification and nothing more. Most of its info, and even itself in its entirety, is redundant.

Generally, it always takes a long time for countries to ratify treaties, unless they are really essential for their very existence. Even treaties that concern border settlement, may take months to be ratified, if the settlement is minor. (A quick Google search will support this argument.) This is easily explainable by the fact that the parliaments concerned have loads of other issues to discuss, and usually ratification of an agreed treaty is either a mere technicality of low priority, or, requires extensive talks to reach consensus, and thus takes a long time to happen. In either case, there's no real reason to include such details in the treaty article, unless they are highly notable, which can be easily interpreted as unusual.

The only points I could think of as really relevant to this particular treaty article for the countries that have already ratified the treaty, could be summarised in two sentences, one for Romania and the president impeachment attempt, that may or may not have pushed back its deposit of the already nationally ratified treaty, and another for Malta that has to hold elections and cannot ratify "on" time.

But, what about timing, too, as the section refers to "late" ratifiers. Well, since the intended time for this treaty to become effective is January 1st, 2013, how can any ratifying country that has already deposited its instrument of ratification be called a late ratifier indeed? I mean, it's quite clear that even if the needed 12 eurozone countries deposited their ratifications on Jan 1st, still, none of them would be late, no matter if they had finished their national ratification processes back in March 2012 or, on December 27th.

Having to include other details like that the ratification bill in France was connected to another bill (which is quite common, for example, in the UK there's only one bill for the accession of Croatia to the EU and the Irish "concerns" protocol on the Lisbon treaty), or that on a certain date the bill passed the internal committee of a parliament seems quite absurd to me. Not to mention the example of the Netherlands on this section, where even the party politics are mentioned.

As it is now, this section is too long, has too many details and is up to some degree speculative.

My suggestion is to get rid of the countries that have ratified the treaty and keep a small section, or more, for unusual things that have happened, such as the constitutional challenges, the Malta elections, the impeachment attempt in Romania, and Ireland deciding to first approve the responsibility law and then deposit the ratification. One section could be named legal challenges, and another, ratification details. Also, for the current section, the colours used should be reverted to the original scheme, and each country entry should be reduced to the essential, which means, if a relevant bill has been introduced or not, on which stage it is, and what remains for the treaty to be ratified. Heracletus (talk) 20:17, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The basic idea behind the current version of the chapter Ratification process for late ratifiers, is that unusual things did happen for all countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later. In example -now when you mentioned France- it is certainly notable and important to mention, that their newly elected president first required the European Council to sign a "Compact for Growth", before he was ready to start the French ratification. When the Fiscal Compact was signed 2 March 2012, it was also described as important to ratify it as soon as possible, and that all signatories should do so before 31 December 2012. With this in mind, it is also an unusual event by-it-self, if a government subsequently opted not to submit the treaty on an early date to the national parliament. Looking among the 9 eurozone countries and 5 non-euro countries currently being classified as "late ratifiers" (with a more detailed review/note given of their unusual ratification process), it is IMHO only Estonia where we have a border-line case, where you can question if any unusual events really happened (as the Estonian government submitted the treaty in June - and completed the ratification in December).

In my opinion the fact that only 1 out 15 countries can be questioned of being "truly unusual", merit that we keep utilizing the "ratified in Q4-2012 or later" criteria for when to provide a short additional description/note to explain the ratification process in those countries. Please keep in mind, that for all countries achieving a "Green status", we are currently shortening the note the moment it turns Green. And from the moment when all of the "late ratifiers" have ratified, we will entirely remove the color scheme and redundant info (meaning the dates for presidential assent + deposit will also be removed from the notes). So the notes will gradually shrink in size with time. The reason why it is nice to keep a certain level of redundancy for the time being, is that the chapter currently also function as a "status indicator" for the ratification process in the group of countries being "late to ratify", and here it serves a purpose to get the exact status confirmed (in order not to confuse the readers). Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 16:29, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I cannot but disagree in a certain degree with you. I don't think there's anything really exceptional about the ratification processes in Estonia, Finland, or Slovakia. The specialities of France, Ireland, Malta and, even, the Netherlands can be summarized into one or two sentences per country. I am not sure if Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are just being slow or there are real issues there. I think this section needs to be restructured, as I have already suggested.

As this treaty bills may or may not involve constitutional issues, and, thus, most countries are consulting their constitutional courts and/or such special parliamentary committees, I think it is quite normal that there's some stalling in the ratification process. However, when the matter finally reaches the parliament itself, the procedure is usually quite quick (with the exception of Malta and the Netherlands). I think that the sections of France and the Netherlands have only to do with internal politics, and could be greatly reduced.

I believe late ratifiers should be defined as countries ratifying the treaty after this has officially come into force. I propose we split this section into a section for (late) ratifiers and their ratification process, and, another for countries that faced some quite individual issues during ratification, such as France, Ireland and Malta. For the Netherlands, I think we should only mention the general election, rather than the internal politics.

I don't find it unusual that non-eurozone countries take a long time to ratify this treaty, as the treaty doesn't involve the same rules for them (namely articles 3 and 4), and they don't have any effect on when the treaty comes into force. The stalling in most countries can be easily explained by the treaty raising constitutional issues addressed by parliaments, internal politics and long parliamentary processes, which all seem quite normal and usual. Constitutional challenges outside the parliamentary processes are not as usual and thus, have their own small section, which could be done also for the unusual ratification issues encountered in each country. Every treaty is supposed to come into force as soon as possible, but, it quite usually takes a country 6 months to a few years to fully ratify them, even when they involve nuclear weapons, accession of a country to the EU, border settlement, or whichever other topic.

On a particular level, I think Estonia (and Finland and Slovakia when they ratify) should be removed, and the entries of France and Ireland (and the Netherlands and Malta when they ratify) be moved into a different section or this section be renamed accordingly (into "ratification issues" or something along those lines). Heracletus (talk) 16:59, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

For the moment I see no reason to implement the proposed changes and a new structure. Currently the chapter function both as a section with status of the process for remaining "late ratifiers", and a compilation of notes to highlight why the ratification in several countries took longer than expected. In this way I think it really -in a good valuable way- supplements the wikitable, which only feature barenaked dates. There are the following two good reasons justifying it is okay to classify countries as "late ratifiers" if they only ratified more than eight months after signing the treaty:

1. All 17 eurozone countries managed to ratify the just as important ESM treaty within eight months after having signed the treaty (while four of them even had first to argue and win some delaying constitutional court challenges on the road).
2. All signatories of the Fiscal Compact agreed upon the time of signing, that it was of huge importance to ratify fast, as a part of the reason behind the compact was to throw some strong short term signals into the head of financial markets, about the eurozone now will start to act in a much more fiscal sound and responsible way. By ensuring a fast ratification to happen, it would show to the financial markets that this time the eurozone was really committed to improve their fiscal responsibility.

Given the two points above, it justifies why we have a short section to single out the reasons why the ratification process took longer than expected in certain countries. In Netherlands there is absolute no doubt, the delay was due to the previous government loosing their parliamentary majority in April 2012, combined with the fact that the new election only happened 12 September, and the new government was only formed primo November (while certain parties like PvdA was not ready whole-heartedly to support treaty ratification ahead of the election -due to what I speculate had something to do with an attempt not to support "unpopulair" decisions -in the eyes of their potential electional base- shortly ahead of the election). As internal politics definately caused a delay of the Dutch ratification, it is justified shortly to mention this in our articles current section. Speaking about Finland, this country opted to ratify both the Compact and the much more complicated "implementation law" as a combined bill, and that's why it was only submitted in November 2012. This is also an interesting info for the readers, as this info can not be extracted from the wikitable above with barenaked dates. So far only Ireland+Finland chose this more complicated approach (perhaps due to special legal rules in those two countries - but I really dont know). All other countries opted first to ratify the Fiscal Compact, and then afterwords deal with the needed "implementation law" in a seperate new law (mostly because the Compact outlined that the deadline for passing "implementation laws" is 1 Jan 2014, and the agreed deadline for ratifying the Compact was 1 Jan 2013). So the idea from the start, was that the Compact should be ratified as fast as possible. To be frank, there has also really been no constitutional court cases in the process (except for Germany), as all countries did not prepare "constitutional implementation laws" as part of the Fiscal Compact ratification process. Even in France there was no court case, but only a usual consultation between the government and the constitutional court, if it would be okay only to ratify the treaty with simple majority and outside constitutional paragraphs (ahead of starting the process in the parliament). So there has really been no constitutional challenges (except for Germany) justifying a late/delayed ratification. Anyway - I want to emphasize, that the idea of having the "late ratifiers" section in the article, is however not to create any negative blaming list, but the main idea is really instead to have a section that shortly explains why ratification in certain countries took longer than expected (as it currently does). In most -if not all countries- we had some good explanations. Why should we hide those explanations for the readers, by deleting the notes?

I also see no reaseon currently to start splitting up the section into several sub-sections. This would be more confusing than helpfull. It is better just to have one section dealing with all "late ratifiers" - both in regards of noting "current ratification status" and the main reason why "ratification was slow". The basic idea, is temporarily to allow for in depth "ratification status" details in the notes - for as long as the country has a red/yellow/blue status. But when it turn green we are shorting down the notes, so that it only contain info about the main reason why "ratification was slow". Actually I think it all makes good sence. I can perhaps agree you have a slight point, by stating that it is "less important" for non-euro countries to deliver a fast ratification (due to standing outside the eurozone). But on the other hand, when the non-euro countries are not even legally bound by the treaty after ratification, it also makes it a bit strange and a signal of "no true commmitment" if they do not ratify the Fiscal Compact along with the deadlines for the eurozone. Why hold it back - if it is not even binding? So to me it is also unusual/notable, when non-euro countries did not ratify within eight months. They also shook hands on 2 March 2012, that it was very important to deliver a fast ratification, and are not even hardly affected by the rules straight away. So what has been holding them back? I would really like to know, and that is why I appreciate to have the explonatory section. It is interesting to know, that the delay was caused by "political power struggles" in Romania, and that Sweden apparently have a special tradition of conducting length "publing hearings for 3 months" before starting to ratify anything. I think good explanations and sources will eventually emerge for all late ratifiers. The concept of having a small section for it (as we have now), is in my point of view a very good idea. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 01:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding to reply on your first section which involves politics and a discussion on why the ESM had to be ratified sooner than the Fiscal Compact, I will just stick to this sentence you wrote: "Given the two points above, it justifies why we have a short section to single out the reasons why the ratification process took longer than expected in certain countries." The key point there is longer than expected, because the date by which at least 12 eurozone countries have been expected to have fully ratified this treaty is January 1st, 2013. This is what the wording of the treaty clearly implies. So, until that date, or the actual date on which the treaty becomes effective, no country can be considered late.

You may mention elections and the period of inactivity before them, in general, but, internal politics and certain parties policies are always speculative. This is quite easy to explain, in the same way that opinion polls are not always bearing the same results as elections, a party statement that it supports or does not a certain bill is not always indicative of how the bill will be voted on by its MP's. It always has to do with the exact statement and the person making it, and, generally, this information is redundant. Eventually the parliament will vote on it and we'll see if it passed and who voted how on it, or the bill will be withdrawn and noone will ever know what might have happened. In the same fashion, we could have detailed results per party, per parliament, per country. And, these are not even results, they are statements of intention by some parties, in a particular country, the Netherlands. They're nice info to include before the actual vote, perhaps, but, once a vote is taken, they will not really mean anything anymore. In their very essence, they are opinion polls of parties (representing their PM's) before a vote, with the clear reflection of certain people (representing the whole population) participating in an opinion poll before elections.

You do mention yourself that "the agreed deadline for ratifying the Compact was 1 Jan 2013", so, you provide yourself the counter-argument for the inclusion of certain countries in the late ratifiers category. I think it's more interesting to know which countries have already passed an implementation law, rather than if that happened in a combined ratification law. Finland and Ireland which already passed an implementation law before depositing the ratification instrument did NOT miss the "agreed deadline", yet, you want to include them in the late ratifiers section.

You also state that you don't understand why a country would not ratify a treaty that is not legally binding for itself as soon as possible. Well, the answer may lie in what I wrote about parliaments having enough load already and thus assigning low priority onto it? Also, by referring to stalling due to constitutional issues, I was not explicitly referring to legal challenges, but, also to most parliaments seeking to define (either by consulting the national constitutional court, or a relevant committee) how this treaty should be ratified and what, if any, constitutional issues arise from it, BEFORE they started actually ratifying it, thus rendering any constitutional challenges on it AFTER it has been ratified null.

Also, as this is not a general article on the parliamentary process, or about bills, in Sweden, and you acknowledged that "Sweden apparently ha[s] a special tradition of conducting length[y] "publi[c] hearings for 3 months" before starting to ratify anything", don't you think including this here is redundant? The parliament there just follows the usual procedure, after all... However, I find the incompatibility section in the Sweden entry quite important to include as it is particular for this treaty and a unique case.

Anyway, we've made our points, we disagree and there's no third opinion on the matter yet, so, I don't see any point in continuing to argue here.Heracletus (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Heracletus, this has become ridiculous. Nearly all the details you've sourced to WP:PRIMARY sources. WP:SECONDARY sources don't mention these details because they aren't notable. Just because a state was late ratifying, doesn't mean that something strange did happen. Sometimes, states are just slow. We should only cover notable delays in the process, not all states who were "late" by the criteria you invented. Since you've kept adding this non-notable information after our previous discussion on this topic, I'm going to start reverting as per WP:BRD. Please seek consensus on the talk page before re-adding all these non-notable details. The article is already WP:TOOLONG. We should be cutting all the trivia out, not adding more. TDL (talk) 05:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Your act is offensive, TDL. Earlier on in this debate at 29 November, the two of us together agreed on a compromise and consensus for the content in this sub-chapter. You are not allowed few hours after a second editor post his oppinion at the talkpage, suddenly to declare a new WP:Consensus for your own view point, and certainly not just on the basis of counting that we (apparently) for the moment have two editors vote standing against another editors vote. This is not how consensus rules work here at Wikipedia, where consensus is reached through debate -exchange of views- and letting the strongest argument win, or develop consensus through that road. I will ask you to carefully read the WP:Consensus. The fact that you just bluntly deletes ALL GREEN INFO points is ridiculous. Heracletus, stated he actually found value in certain parts of the info points, but just suggested another structure and way to present it. You have ignored that fact, and now just violently removed it all. Based on that, I have to completely undo your removal. I persist, that before enforcing violent changes to the article, we have first to reach consensus about what to do, here at the talkpage. I am ready to consider some of the proposals Heracletus mentioned above (but certainly not ready to accept that you remove everything). In the process of reaching a consensus, it is very hard to consider and debate a new structure for the content, if all the content suddenly is removed from the page. This is the ground, why I now reinstate the deleted material again, so that we can debate and reach a true consensus. Danish Expert (talk) 11:38, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Despite the few reverts and a few harsh words, this has been quite the most polite dispute I have faced. Nevertheless, do you think that someone should refer this to dispute resolution, not so much because it is anything close to a major dispute, but so as to get more opinions on the matter and more people involved? If you think it's a good idea, you may pick one of the six ways, here: WP:DR. I did try to ask for more opinions on the WikiProject European Union (WP:EU), but so far got no reaction. Heracletus (talk) 17:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

@Danish Expert: No need to get defensive. I never declared that there was a new consensus, I simply said that there was no consensus to add all this information, and undid your edits. If you'd like to add the info to the article it's your responsibility to seek consensus to add it, not my responsiibility to establish a consensus to keep it out. I simply followed WP:BRD. Your additions have been reverted, now you need to establish a consensus on the talk page for them. If you'd like to engage in a WP:DR process such as a WP:RFC on the issue, I'd gladly participate in that.

Please note that I didn't "bluntly deletes ALL GREEN INFO points", as you suggest. The edits by an IP were not me, and I don't support their removal. I agree with Heracletus that there are details on France and Ireland that is notable that should be kept. Instead of attacking me, you should try to WP:AGF as I have done of you. Please don't restore your disputed content until there is a consensus to include it. TDL (talk) 21:09, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, because this is going towards a revert war, I suggest either of you requests a dispute resolution now. I may disagree with Danish expert, but, I must also note that things are not exactly like you put them, TLD. The BRD is about being bold once, being reverted, discussing, it's not being bold twice and re-reverting before the new consensus is reached. I may agree with your changes (or not), personally, but, I don't think we have reached consensus, as Danish expert's arguments are not to be entirely ignored. I don't think there have been any real attacks on anyone personally yet, and I wish we will not go into that. I see what we have all written as referring to the content of the page, and not the people involved.

I also have to note that either side must establish consensus involving the other side. If consensus has not been established in general, including or excluding even a single sentence cannot be considered legitimate. Also, BRD is not a policy, and its page includes this: "BRD is not an excuse to revert any change more than once. If your reversion is met with another bold effort, then you should consider not reverting, but discussing." I would suggest reverting back to the version with Danish expert's edits, or keeping them as comments inside <!-- -->, to serve as a discussion basis, if TLD agrees.

I also have no problem submitting the dispute resolution request myself, if we first reach consensus on which kind we/you want to apply for. I may also apply for a resolution even if you cannot agree on which kind, if things escalate.

If this article is so important for either of you, consider, instead of reverting, using your own sandbox, which can be found here http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:Mypage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_Sandbox/preload to present a version of what you would like the page to look like. (For future easy access, you can put {{My sandbox}} on your user page.)

No offence meant. Heracletus (talk) 21:53, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree, there is no consensus, but my edit isn't the bold one, it is the revert. Danish Expert boldly added lots of non-notable content, and I reverted until a consensus is reached for its inclusion. I attempted to do this with a partial revert, since some of the additions were worthwhile, however if you or Danish Expert desire I can do a full revert back to a undisputed state. I'll happily participate in any form of DR. A RFC, as I suggested above, is probably the best course. TDL (talk) 22:48, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I have been a couple of day offline for Christmas, but now have time to respond shortly. Sorry if I got a little heated above. After checking the edit history, I can also see you are right that another IP removed the remaining Green points, so I apology for accusing you for that before having carefully checked. However, I still insist your removal of content was bold and unjustified, TDL. Because ahead of the removal the two of us had agreed it was OK the sub-chapter temporarily (for as long as countries had red/yellow/blue status) could function as a status chapter with in depth status details being listed and acceptance of a certain level of redundant info with the table above. The fact that you choose again to remove the disputed content after I had reinstated the content and provided good valid grounds for why it was important to keep until a new consensus was reached (as it was hard to get other editors evaluation and input for consensus if the disputed points had been removed), I feel tends to be directly provocative and not helping our discussion at all. On the contrary it spoils the attempt to reach a new consensus, and was a bad move.

I also insist this info you dispute and continue to remove, is certainly not trivia. On the contrary it helps readers to understand how far the ratification progressed in remaining countries that are still in the process to ratify, and provide high quality explanations why the ratification was late / delayed. I think it is very informative - and something being highly appreciated by the readers. Our first agreement and consensus reached on 29 November, was to heavily cook down the amount of details mentioned the moment a country reached a "green status". This is actually also what I have done until now (although as explained above, I did not remove the redundant info with date for presidential assent + deposit, as I felt this was needed for as long as the chapter primarily functioned as a "status chapter" - in order to prevent the readers getting confused about the "true status"). Again I have to repeat, that the reason why details are currently dense for "Red/Yellow countries" like Netherlands/Belgium/Poland, is to provide readers with a high quality status for the ratification progress. The moment these countries have ratified and become Green, I agree with you that it is possible and fully justified to omit unneeded details from the process. But: Only from the very moment where a country turn into "Green status". And the moment when all countries are listed green in the sub-chapter, I also agree it is okay to remove the color code and all redundant info. So as time progress, it will heavily shrink in size. This is also why, I really do not share you concern for the article to develop into something like {Toolong}. We actually already on 29 November agreed on a strategy that will prevent a {Toolong}. Danish Expert (talk) 01:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for a new consensus solution

To move the discussion and consensus attempt a bit forward, I am ready to accept the point stated above by Heracletus, in regards of changing the "late ratification" criteria from the previous post "1 October 2012" deadline to "1 January 2013" (the date of entry into force, and the official target deadline from the start). The reason why I initially chose "1 October 2012" was because I could see a pattern, that there were special circumstances in 13 out of 14 countries ratifying in Q4-2012 or later, with the only exception being Estonia. Given the argument given by Heracletus about the deadline being irrationally picked, I can however also agree, that he indeed has a point to describe it does not make sense to call countries for "late ratifiers" when this in principle contradicts with the fact that they managed to be within the "target deadline" for ratification. On this ground, I am ready to accept we can now change the "Late ratifiers" chapter only to list countries ending their ratification post 1 January 2013. This consensus proposal is however conditional, that we along the way also create an additional sub-chapter still to mention those countries which had notable ratification events during their ratification process. In order to avoid a forest of sub-chapters, my proposal however goes, that we could simply have one subchapter entitled "late ratifiers", and a second entitled "Significant events for early ratifiers" (incl. German constitutional court challenge, French push for conditional Growth Pact, Irish+Finnish government opting for the approach to delay ratification until also first having enacted an "implementation law", etc.). My parenthesis should currently be understood in this way, that we continue listing "country info" in this chapter as per a bullet point with all significant events for each country. In example, Ireland had more than one. With this new proposed structure, I can of course also accept striping away green color code (incl. redundant info) for all the countries to be listed in the second chapter. But insist to keep color code + redundant info temporarily in the first chapter, as per our consensus originally reached on 29 November (but now with the criteria of being a "late ratifier" being pushed from the 1 October 2012 deadline to 1 January 2013). Could this be a solution and compromise that you are willing to support? Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 01:16, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I agreed not to push for the removal of the existing non-notable/redundant content in the article, however I didn't agree to the addition of even more. I really don't feel that I removed any significant details from the Red/Yellow countries, I mainly just cut down the repetitiveness of the text. If you think I've removed something important, you can either selectively restore it or take it to the talk page and we can discuss it point-by-point. Also, if you'd like to restore the section on Estonia and a brief description on Finland (per our previous agreement) I won't revert (though I don't agree that this info is notable enough to warrant a paragraph), however I object to all the other minute details that have been added since.

As for your suggestion of "1 January 2013", I object to a specific date altogether. If something notable happened in a state that ratified before 1 January 2013, we should mention it in the "significant events" section. If a state ratifies the treaty in February 2013 and nothing notable happened, it should be deleted. Basically, I'd support your proposal as long as a state is moved from the "late ratifiers" to the "significant events" section and all the redundant info deleted immediately after ratification by the state. TDL (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Answer to TDL about his previous removal/re-edit of material (inappropriately made before our consensus debate had ended): My earlier opinion about this is unchanged. Only point I want to rectify compared to my previous reply, is that you indeed did not remove red/yellow/blue content, but in your reply at the talkpage you questioned its notability and expressed a desire that you wanted to remove it. The way I described it here at the talkpage, this was not perfectly clear, and your move sounded to be more "violent"/bold that it actually was. Sorry for that. Yet, my main point still stands, that removals/changes of edits currently content for consensus debate about its existence and structure here at the talkpage, was a bad move and actually makes it more difficult plus time consuming now to reach the consensus we all attempt to reach. I will now start to read through all the changes you made since 22 December at the disputed subsection, and see to what degree I can approve your country-specific changes. My only point is, that in situations like this (with an ongoing consensus debate), we will accidently use too much of each others valuable time (compared to the level of positive results this effort provides), if we constantly re-edit each others edits in the disputed chapter before having reached consensus. It is much more time efficient first to reach consensus, and then only subsequently start to change/re-edit content. I feel the damage has already been done, but just hope you will be more patient in the future, before you start to re-edit or remove material being content for an ongoing consensus debate.

Argument for permanent "Late ratifiers (post 1 January 2013)" chapter: The Fiscal Compact treaty enters into force 1 January 2013 for 16 countries, and define interdependent subsequent deadlines (being 12 months after the treaty's "entry into force") for when the countries at the latest need to enact required "implementation laws". As countries ratifying after 1 January 2013 will have a later "entry into force" and hence also later deadlines for enactment of "implementation laws", this by-it-self (in particular when also keeping in mind the political commitments outspoken at the time of signing the treaty, which emphasized the need for all countries to do their outmost to reach a fast ratification of the treaty before 1 January 2013), really justify why we also create and permanently keep to display a section that highlights some short key-info and explanation for why the ratification for "late ratifiers" became delayed. I still insist, that most readers will find this info notable and interesting.

Argument for notability of "status content": On an overall level the notability of my content and add of status info is justified by the fact, that we currently have two high quality WP:SECONDARY sources frequently updated and published by two different departments of the European parliament (Directorate General for the Presidency and Directorate general for internal policies), and even also a Wikipedia:TERTIARY source from IIEA. This proofs people are highly interested to read and learn details about the ratification status. The fact that our Wikipedia article's "status section" is build only on WP:PRIMARY sources and in fact has a higher degree of quality and accurate info compared to the two WP:SECONDARY sources from the European Parliament, is basically just something we should be proud of. This is a result of dedicated hard work from certain wikipedian editors, who managed to dig up correct status info from the golden level of the primary source itself.

Argument why WP:TOOLONG concerns do not justify removal of content: If sections of notable info becomes too heavy in an article, the general policy always is not to delete it, but to spin-off the content into sub-articles and writing a shorter resume at the main article.

Proposal for further talkpage debate on notability of certain country-info: Previously I have already listed some of my country specific arguments. But currently I feel it is impossible to debate both the "general notability" + "chapter structure" + "country specific info" in the one and same reply here at the talkpage. If we start now also to discuss country specific details, I fear this will derail the debate and attempt to reach consensus for "notability criteria" and "chapter structure". My proposal is first to reach consensus for that, before we start to discuss country specific details. Or at least we should deal with country specific debates at dedicated sub-sections here at the talkpage.

Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 11:56, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

As this seems to my eyes as an implementation of my suggestions, I agree on principle. However, I still have a number of reservations. First of all, I think we should somehow achieve a more broad consensus, because changes in the format of this article will probably modify the format of the pages for any new EU treaties. I mean, the general layout and format of this article is clearly the same used for all the latest EU treaties, i.e. first the ratification table and underneath it a ratification process section\list that slowly disappeared as the countries ratified the treaty. I think this could be done by requesting dispute resolution through an RFC. In the opposite case, I think the consensus that may be achieved now will be revisited and debated upon again quite soon. Secondly, I am not sure if we would all agree on the same entries for the ratification issues per country. The definition of what constitutes a significant event has already been debated above. An example of this, are the implementation laws. For me, it would be more interesting and helpful to have another column on some table stating whether a country has enacted a compatible (or in the case of Sweden not so compatible) implementation law, but this may prove difficult to check and is not included in any secondary source. The fact that Finland chose to pass the bill ratifying the treaty together with an implementation law does not seem so significant to me, whereas the fact that Ireland had to wait a long time for the implementation law to be voted upon and only then deposited its ratification seems more significant. On a third point, I would not like to see any mentions to the ratification process in such a section, other than what is really needed to explain the issue mentioned. The two or three sections, could be merged as they (almost) are now, with the countries that have ratified moving up and the others having a subsection label of "late ratifiers" or "ratification still pending". Generally, we may or may not disagree on the details, but, I also think an RFC could be useful for future articles, too.

I also agree with TDL's approach for late ratifiers, when they ratify and nothing significant has happened, they should be gone. The fact that they were late can be easily denoted with a footnote on the table.

As you still seem to disagree whose edit was the least constructive, I do suggest you engage in dispute resolution somehow. Heracletus (talk) 14:25, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for my late reply, Heracletus. I got caught up by holiday travels and other work on the agenda, but now have time to thoughtfully respond with the following 3 replies:

Reply on the proposal to develop a common standard for future "ratification articles" through a RFC process (reservation 1): I see no need at the moment to launch a RFC solution, as we already have a good handfull of engaged editors involved to push this Fiscal Compact article in the right direction. At some point of time a RFC might be a good idea if we continue to disagree, but not right now. In my point of view it is also just a small part of the newly proposed consensus style (namely the part about using the red/yellow/blue/green color as status indicator for progress of ratification) which is subject for future use in other treaty ratification articles. And I do not think it should be a new standard used blindly on all sorts of treaty ratification articles. In example it has been appropriate for the Fiscal Compact treaty to map its ratification developments more closeley in each country due to its importance and fiscal effect in each of the ratifying states, while I would never provide the same kind of details for the ratification article on Croatia's accesion treaty. The idea to highlight significant events delaying the ratification, should in my point of view alos be limited only to be used for treaties with a specific target date. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply on notability of the integrated ratification approach picked by Ireland+Finland: The reason why this is notable for both countries is:

1. It deviates from the outlined ratification approach in the treaty which ask countries to follow a two step approach where the treaty should first be ratified as soon as possible (and prior 1 Jan 2013), followed by a 12-month deadline to subsequently deal with enactment of compliant implementation laws.
2. On the day where the treaty was signed all signatories shook hands on the importance of ratifying the treaty as fast as possible, due to the symbolic calming effects this kind of commitment would generate towards the nervous financial markets in Europe; and as an instrument to secure a fast ratification the two-step approach obviously is the best, as countries following this approach can wait until a later time to design the detailed domestic laws with all the complicated implementation stuff.
3. So far only Ireland+Finland opted to follow the combined ratification approach which in both cases significantly delayed their ratification of the treaty - which is notable for the article - because it informs the reader why the process took so long time to complete in Ireland and why Finland was one of the last countries to ratify despite having a reputation of being one of the most committed countries. This is why I still think this special process should be shortly noted for both countries.

Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply on use of footnotes for "late ratifiers" (completing after 1 Jan 2013): I have two reasons why I still prefer we instead should continue to use the list-format in the subchapter (with a short note of the delaying ratification events for late ratifiers) -and not convert it into footnotes. First reason is, that it provides a better and more logical structure in the article to let the footnotes only deal with certain limited fields of info (which is the argument of only letting the subchapter deal with all explanations of "late ratifications" - and YES we have "significant events/non-events" for all "late ratifiers" which help to explain why it took so long). Second reason is to preserve a more pleasent layout, where I think a too dense or long list of footnotes should be avoided, and thus I prefer not to use them for notice on "late ratifiers" and their delayed deadlines for "implementation law" ratifications (prefering this info to be listed shortly in the subchapter). Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Next time you mess with the comments, I will make a huge deal over it, and it may go bad. I understand the section was not well-ordered, but, you may not mess with other people's comments to restructure them so that you can answer. At least, not without asking. Read this WP:TPO. Heracletus (talk) 05:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

You are right. It was also the first time during my three years of contributions, I have been so bold to split up a few comments at a talkpage. I took the chance of doing so, as I felt it would hugely improve the structure for our plethora of sub debates, and thus also benefit the chance of other editors opting to chime in with their oppinion. And I also did it very carefully, so that nothing was destroyed or put out of context. If you/TDL feel we should revert it back to the previous format, I will of course accept it; but as said before I only had good intentions when deciding to add more structure into our debate -and also think it will only benefit the outcome of our debate in a positive way. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Most EU treaties use the same format, and usually have a target date, formal or informal. An RFC would solve most issues.

There's no two-step approach. The treaty just gives ratifiers a concise amount of time to implement its fiscal provisions into national legislation. They "shook hands", now, didn't they? In my honest opinion, it is not really important if a country voted the implementation law together with the treaty, if it did so 3 days after it voted for the treaty or six months later. What is important is which countries have ratified it and, which countries have enacted an implementation law, and if this is fortified in their constitution or not.

Honestly, a footnote is much much shorter than a full-blown section for late ratifiers. And, honestly, 2 or more years after a certain country has ratified the treaty, nobody will really care if a certain Senate had the second reading on one date or the other... If something is notable, it will survive, whether the country is a "late ratifier" or not. And whether a country has ratified the treaty after it had already come into force for other countries or not, can be shown by a one-line footnote. Heracletus (talk) 06:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply about launching a RFC:I concede to your argument about the target dates indeed being a common thing in EU treaties. I will also NOT object if we at one point of time launch a WP:RFC for our article about the Fiscal Compact. My point that we should not create an overall common standard applying for all articles about "Ratification of International treaties", however still stands as per the wikipedia policy (I forgot the link): That we do not need to align all articles belonging to the same category into the same common standard for the content or structure of content, as wikipedia allow for different content standards to co-exist - as long as it is supported by notability criteria and other overall policies for the content. Again I have to repeat my argument above, that I do not want the article covering the ratification of Croatia's accession treaty to use the exact same standard as we have used in our Fiscal Compact article. My argument is, that the ratification outcome - both in regards of outcome and entry into force - is given in advance for Croatia's accession treaty (with all the ratification procedures mainly just being a matter of formality), and thus it is not appropriate for this type of articles to feature the same detailed "status updates" to map the progress of ratification in each of the ratifying states. The fact that Croatia is accessed into EU also have limited internal consequences towards each of the ratifying states, which also is an argument against having the same kind of in depth detailed notes about their ratification, as we currently have in our article about the Fiscal Compact. As per the italic wikipedia policy I mentioned above, I think it is okay our Fiscal Compact article deviates from the standard used by the article covering the ratification of Croatia's accession treaty, and do not think these two articles should be designed according to any identical standard (simply because notability for "details about ratification" will greatly differ - depending on the content of the treaty being ratified). Danish Expert (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply about countries not ratifying according to the two-step approach: You are correct, that no countries were forced to use the two-step approach for ratification. My point that it is however still notable to mention this with 1 short line, whenever a country opted to ratify according to a one-step approach (with the "implementation law" being integrated into the ratification procedure of the treaty itself), is that this is a short explanation pointing out why it took longer time for such countries to complete their ratification of the treaty, compared to other countries. I still think this is a notable point for our readers. Please note I am only talking about having 1 short line here for Finland, and possibly 5 short lines to descripe the more complicated process in Ireland. Finally, just to argue the other way around, if we ommit notes about special events (or non events) having a negative impact on when a country completed ratification, we will also reduce the information value for readers to understand all the hidden stories behind the late "completion dates" in the wikitable. In other words the short explaining notes in the subchapter below featuring "countries having completed ratification with significant events", really complements the wikitable in a good valuable way. Danish Expert (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply about footnotes for "later ratifiers" (completing ratification after 1 Jan 2013): First of all, I agree with you we should not have a full blown description for "late ratifiers" in a subchapter, as we currently have while the country have an open ongoing ratification process. As I already agreed with TDL in November 2012, our strategy is to reduce all the country specific ratification info into short lines that only explain: "significant events during the ratification having a negative impact on when the ratification was completed" (but only at the point of time where the ratification status turns green). So what we discuss right now, is if we should have short lines about "delayed entry into force" placed in the subchapter where those "countries having completed ratification with significant events" are listed OR place this note up in the "Footnote section". I still think it would be inappropriate to list this the note about "delayed entry into force" in the footnote section, as we would basically start to drown in the number of footnotes attached to the table (with 9 countries needing to have their own specific note for this). And as I already argued earlier, we will already have all of those 9 countries listed in the subchapter below featuring "countries having completed ratification with significant events", as all of them in first place is characterized of having suffered some delaying significant events during their ratification procedures. Thus, to save space and provide for a better structure, I still have the opinion that it is better to place the 1-line extra note about "entry into force" down in that section, rather than having it listed as footnotes beneath the wikitable. Danish Expert (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Uhm, we again disagree, we have presented our points in an exhaustive manner, and further discussion of this sort just restates what has already been said. But, ok:

I suggested an RFC for the ratification section, and for EU treaties. And, a relevant article is this: Treaty of Accession 2011. You may note there several shorter or longer delays, yet, no big deal is made about them. You may argue that the target date is further in the future, but, in Fiscal Compact, the target date was for at least 12 eurozone countries, not for every country to have ratified it by then. Heracletus (talk) 22:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I just realised my previous reply accidently had a wrong link to Croatia's Accession Treaty. This has now been fixed. All along I referred to the same article you linked to above, when saying that I do not think its appropriate to let it follow the exact same "content standard" as we choose here for our Fiscal Compact article, per my arguments about different notability thresholds applying to the various content of treaties being ratified. Another matter of detail, is that the Fiscal Compact is an "International treaty" and not an "EU treaty". I still insist it is a bad idea to enforce the same content rules for all ratification chapters related to all kind of "International treaties", per the argument that notability of the ratification status will differ from treaty to treaty. Croatia's accession treaty do in my point of view not merit a detailed status chapter with colour codes, per my argument above that ratification status is not notable due to the insignificant impact the ratified treaty has on internal affairs in each ratifying state, plus that ratification of such treaties is only a formality that normally does not merit a detailed status chapter. Danish Expert (talk) 04:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Some countries had already compatible laws long before the treaty, some refined their laws to be compatible, some introduced new, some have a year to do so, some must first ratify the treaty, then, will have a year after to pass an implementation law. Some countries decided to pass the ratification along with the implementation law. Ireland, decided NOT to. Ireland, just waited for the implementation law to deposit its long before signed and passed ratification law notification to the EU. Is this notable? perhaps, in relevance to why it took a long time to deposit the ratification... Is this mentioned clearly? YES. Is it notable that some countries (Germany, Poland, Spain etc.) already had a compatible law and didn't need to pass a new one? perhaps yes, perhaps not, but not in relevance to ratification - perhaps, as a trivia could fit somewhere... Is it notable that Finland passed its implementation law along with its ratification law? NO, as it didn't seem to delay the ratification process. Is it notable whatever happened in all its detail with all the 25 countries (or all eurozone countries, or all late ratifiers, or all countries that start with "S") and their implementation laws, and the "hidden stories" behind them? NO. In the opposite fashion, why not add every other law any parliament has considered before or together with the ratification law in every country, as it can be certainly claimed that doing so delayed the ratification? To sum up, if something relevant (and highly notable) to the treaty happens, it will be added, no matter if it concerns implementation laws, or the ratification, or whatever else.*

From my POV, since the ratification is a current event, the section requires updates, and removing the old information, keeping only what -from my POV- seems notable. I am under the impression you want to update the section, but not remove the old content - being sure every late ratifier has something notable to be written about it, just add the new events as they happen. Otherwise, the presentation of late ratifiers is a matter of style and wording. To put it frankly, the section was -in my opinion- far more exhaustive than it should be. I have already suggested that notable content will indeed survive*.And, we're starting to drown in footnotes, because new quite long footnotes are added about the required majority needed. And, uhm, no offence meant, but, you seem to add them yourself... :P Are you sure we couldn't use references for them, instead of explaining the full story why a committee/court/law mandated this or that majority was necessary?

*Are you personally satisfied with the way the ratification issues in countries that have already ratified the treaty are currently presented?

I feel like I am making quite the same arguments over and over again. Heracletus (talk) 22:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, our debate indeed contain some redundancy. I feel one of the reasons are, that you accidently continue to assume that I want to keep all non-notable stutus info permanently in the article. I do not want that. At the very start of our long debate (and as per our previous consensus agreement reached 29 November 2012), I emphasized the detailed status info was only ment to surrive for as long as the country had an ongoing uncompleted ratification, and the moment it turned green it was OK to chop away non-notable content. As outlined in the November consensus debate, the argument supporting such an approach was that the "Status chapter" was an ongoing event with extra notability attached in the mind of readers, having a great interest to follow the progress of the ratification for as long as the ratification was still pending a possible political/legal approval. All along I have accepted and agreed the notability for status details is timelimited and will disappear the moment the ratification has been completed. Our only disagreement at the moment, is related to some single countries where I want to add 1 or 2 more new lines. This is why I pretty early in our debate, also called for a country specific debate about notability issues rather than debating things on some more genral lines. I even accept the new structure with one subchapter for "Pending ratifications" and one for "Completed ratifications with significant events" (and the move of countries). To move things forward, I will now re-add those few points which I feel should still be included. We are not so far from each other, compared to what you think. The point we continue to disagree about, is that I insist all 9 ratifying countries ratifying after 1 Jan 2013 should at least have 1 line noting why the ratifcation got delayed and when their deadline has been set for enacting a compliant "implementation law", and that I continue to feel it is notable to mention by 1 line that Finland opted to ratify the treaty + implementation law as an integrated approach, which obviously had a huge delaying effect on when they were able to complete the ratification. This is pure logic, as the implementatin laws call for much more political considerations and design decisions first to be made before the government submits its law proposal, while the ratification of the treaty did not require any additional documents being prepared by the governments before being voted for in the parliament. And the reason why it is notable info for Finland, is that it explain why Finland was one of the last countries to ratify. So despite the fact that Finland managed to complete their ratification 10 days ahead of 1 Jan 2013, it was still a delaying significant event in the ratification process that they opted to ratify according to the much more complicated "integrated approach". Danish Expert (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Reply about footnotes for required majority needed: They can not be replaced by references. They are notable and needed as sentences to explain why the majority needed changed from the usual/pre expectation of a needed majority in the countries having a note. They are not added for countries where the majority needed is not a surprise for the casual reader. In example, we have France where the previous Sarcozy government had prepared for a constitutional implementation law + treaty to be passed by a qualified 2/3 majority, but the court allowed Hollande to pass it as organic law by simple majority. Hence this was also a surprising change compared to the early expectations for a majority needed. Danish Expert (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I think everyone understands that you agree with removing most of the redundant content once a state ratifies. As you state, the problem is that you insist on having a section for every state which ratifies after January 1, regardless of whether something notable happened in that state or not. For a case like Slovakia, it's silly to have an entire separate section which only says: "They ratified on January 30th" when that's already listed in the table. What more is there to say? What benifit is there to repeating this in a separate section? TDL (talk) 14:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

In case of Slovakia we had 1 significant event/non-event which caused the delayed ratification: The government only submitted the draft law for ratification in mid-October. Hence my one-line permanent sentence for Slovakia in the section would be: Slovakia had a delayed entry into force of the treaty on 1 February 2013, due to a delayed completion of the ratification in January 2013, caused by the fact that the government only submitted the draft law for ratification to the parliament in October 2012. When you have a target date to complete ratification prior 1 Jan 2013 it is an unusual and notable thing when the government does not submit its ratification law proposal minimum 3 months ahead of the deadline (in order to ensure that no delay will arise for the agreed ratification). Danish Expert (talk) 16:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that the fact that they didn't ratify until after 1 January is notable, you're the only one who'll ever care what date they submitted the draft law. The former is already included in the table, and could be emphasized with footnotes/colouring/italics/etc if need be. We don't need a separate section to say this all over again. Since this conversation isn't making any progress, and it seems clear that you aren't gonig to agree with Heracletus and I, we need to move onto WP:DR. I think the best approach is to wait until Slovakia has completed their ratification, and then I'll start a WP:RFC on removing this non-notable content. TDL (talk) 05:28, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Removed Belgian subnote and the note about the impeached Romanian president

@Danish Expert: Text such as "The Policy Department of the European Parliament claimed in their most recent status report, that the draft law for ratification of the Fiscal Compact had been submitted to the Senate on 14 November but as of 20 December it was still not visible on the list of all submitted draft law proposals, at the Senate's website. Thus, it appear the source claiming it was submitted to the Belgian Senate is wrong, and accidently mixed up the info with the fact, that the draft law to ratify the treaty allowing for Croatia's accession to EU (with a very similar title), was submitted to the Belgian Senate on 14 November." and "it is currently unknown if this power struggle started by the Prime Minister, indeed also was a root cause for delaying the deposit." is speculative WP:OR that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. You may think this is a "high quality explanations why the ratification was late / delayed", however this is your personal opinion and not an opinion published by a reliable secondary source. TDL (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that the two speculative sections are totally unneeded. The first one is very useful to editors as a comment, until a new report is released by the European Parliament, and the second one could survive as a carefully worded link to the Romanian referendum. Heracletus (talk) 14:25, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

@Heracletus: As for the specific cases, we can't "guess" that the European Parliament has made a mistake. If RS say that they've mixed up two bills, then by all means we should mention it. But we shouldn't do WP:OR to conclude that they're mistaken.

Same for Romania, unless a RS connects the fiscal compact to the referendum nether should we. WP:SYN says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." If we wrote: "Romania didn't submit to November. There was a referendum in July." this clearly implies something that is not explicitly stated by a RS. TDL (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

To be completely honest, we could add it and add the "citation needed" template next to it. To be even more honest, we all know why it's so difficult to find a reliable source about it: very few people really care that much why the deposit of the ratification happened 5 months after it was ratified. I also don't think that the impeachment attempt played a significant role to when the ratification was deposited, after all, since the romanian president was suspended from 6 July to 21 August, and the instrument of ratification was submitted only on 6 November 2012, but, perhaps it did. Heracletus (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I can accept TDL changed my subnote about the source making a false status for Belgium into a hidden note (as it is in first place only subinfo to guide the true hardcore followers of the subject with info why Wikipedia maps another status compared to the latest false report comming from the European Parliament). In regards of Romania, I feel we already had this debate back in November, where we after exchanging well-thought arguments on the subject, agreed it was okay to keep the carefully worded one-liner noting "the impeachment of the Romanian president possibly caused a delay for the deposit of ratification instruments"? The intention of keeping the Romanian note, was that it hopefully could lurke a journalist or any wikipedian editor with knowledge/time to read through the Romanian documents, to invistigate/clarify the matter at some point of time. The note never claimed it was a given fact the impeachment alone caused the entire deposit delay, but only mentioned it as a potential reason for the the delayed deposit. Looking at all deposits for past ratified treaties, you will find that if it takes more than 3 months to deposit there will always be a specific reason why the process to deposit got delayed. Beside of "political turmoil caused by the presidential impeachment", it can also be a court challenge? Or simply because Romania wanted to deposit the "implementation law" along with the treaty? And for Romania it could potentially perhaps also be a matter of having forgot in first place to decide wether or not a "declaration of intend" should be attached to the ratification (which we know they did by the end of the day, but it would be great if someone also checked if this was included from the start, as I am currently out of time to read through all the Romanian google translated law proposals and case documents). As a concluding remark, I feel it is fully justified to keep the Romanian note in its previously formulated version, as I believe this by time will help motivating other editors to try and help finding a sourced reason, for why the Romanian deposit was unexpectedly delayed. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Danish Expert, the Belgian note was perfect, just could not be sourced, thus, it's still a perfect internal comment. TDL's verification was a bit redundant. However, the note/comment will disappear probably, when a new report is published, or when Belgium starts processing the ratification law. The thing about Romania is that it cannot be sourced, either. So, either you have to find a source yourself, or we cannot include it. We could include it along with a citation needed tag, but, still, that will leave it to the discretion of any editor, including TDL, to just remove it after some short time. Heracletus (talk) 07:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I never agreed to include unsourced speculation on Romania. My last comment stated that I'd help you look for sources that linked the referendum with the fiscal compact. At that point in time, no mention of the referendum had ever been included in the article. Later, you added it without any sources and I subsequently reverted this.

Our job is to reflect published reliable sources, not to speculate and put forward new ideas to "motivating other editors to try and help finding a sourced reason". Everything included in the article needs to be WP:VERIFIABLE, but no sources even state that the impeachment might have played a role. If you'd like to leave some info for other editors, this is best done as a hidden note. I'm definitely not opposed to adding a hidden note about the potential role of the referendum, so other editors might be motivated to investigate the matter. TDL (talk) 03:20, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal of adding an implementation law column to the ratification table

@Heracletus: Agreed, a column/table on the implementation law would be a good idea. TDL (talk) 15:08, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

On an irrelevant note, Corsica needs to be painted dark blue on the map. I also found out that the deutsche bank research publishes periodically an update to what has happened with the fiscal compact so far, which also includes a table with the progess of "debt brake" laws, i.e. the implementation laws in each country. The latest one can be found here: [9] and we can use it accordingly. Newer versions will probably be posted here: [10]. Heracletus (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like BHL beat me to Corsica. As for listing the details of the "debt brake" laws, yes that's a good source. We'll have to have to decide whether we want a separate table or just a new column. I suppose it depends on how much information we want to include. If we want to do a step-by-step approval process, as for the treaty itself, with "Conclusion date; Institution; Majority needed; In favour; Against; AB" I think it would be better to put it in a separate table. If we just want to list the final date of approval of the imlpemenation law, we could add a column after "Deposited". What do you think? TDL (talk) 05:18, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I personally would be in favour of the single column solution. But, I don't think it would look very good on the current table, as this is structured focusing on the ratification process and a column for (a different) implementation process will not fit very well into its context. I think it could stand as a separate column or small number of columns, but, I don't think it should be a full-blown table like the one for ratification. However, I hope we will reach consensus on this issue, too. If noone disagrees, I would be grateful if you could open an RFC section for all the issues of this section, so, that we could discuss all issues together and reach an overall conclusion. Heracletus (talk) 06:16, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, I don't think all the in depth details of the implementation law are really that notable. Perhaps the best solution would be to add a column with either a yes/no or a date of approval to the table in the "Fiscal compliance" section with this info? TDL (talk) 17:47, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, I agree with this, too. You can find an incomplete experiment to implement this into the ratification table here: User:Heracletus/sandbox. However, I think it's probably better to be implemented somehow in another section, and on a somehow separate table. You can use my solution somehow, to implement it as a "separate" table. Heracletus (talk) 12:27, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The idea to add "implementation law" info for all 25 countries by an extra column is okay with me. But I do not see any notabililty for us to list specific enactment dates (as this would basically not tell readers anything new, when they already know implementation laws should be enacted within 12 months after the treaty entered into force), but I think it would be fine shortly to note with abbreviations the type of picked implementation law enactment in each country: C (for Constitution), O (for Ordinary law), NC (for Non Compliant). The Commission and ECJ have been granted the task to map if implementation laws have been enacted timely and compliantly in each country, and will most likely publish a compliance report about the issue around January 2014. The only countries allowed to be Non Compliant after 1 January 2014 (if we disregard the small group of countries having a couple of months extra in deadline time due to a completed treaty ratification only in Q1-2013), will be those non-euro countries not having submitted declarations of being bound be the deadline to enact compliant implementation laws before on the date they adopt the euro. This minor change to the wikitable, however will not change my view, that we should still have a small subchapter below to list all significant events having a delaying effect on the ratification process (not only for the 9 countries ratifying after the target date 1 January 2013, but also for those countries ratifying prior but suffering a significant delaying event which causes any reader who look at the dates in the "ratification table" to wonder why the ratification took longer than it usually does). Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

"any reader who look at the dates in the "ratification table" to wonder why the ratification took longer than it usually does"... i.e. you, Danish Expert... :P

Actually, we will need 4 categories, ordinary law enacted with majority vote, ordinary law enacted with 2/3 supermajority vote, law amending the constitution and law which is non-compliant to (the provisions of) the treaty. Please take a look on my sandbox, and, feel free to contribute any edits there. There are two issues: whether we should use the ratification table, or the table in the fiscal compliance chapter of the page, and, if you like the visual style of the separate extra column(s). I will merge the new columns into a single one with the four different category footnotes, when I have time. Heracletus (talk) 07:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Using an abreviation for type of implementation seems like a good idea to me. Personally, I don't particularlly like the way you've made the "Implementation law" column a separate table. I'd rather have it between the "Deposited" and "Ref." columns if we're going to put it in the treaty ratification table. TDL (talk) 03:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

It makes most sence to me, that we add this extra column in the Ratification table rather than the "Fiscal compliance table", per the argument that "Fiscal compliance" does not depend on the chosen "implementation law" type (constitutional/organic) in each country. I also think most readers will appreciate this info is listed in/at the Ratification table, as it help at an early stage to achieve an overview of the ratified solutions in each country - plus it complements the current footnotes about non-eurozone countries not being required (unless submitting a declaration) to enact compliant implementation laws before adopting the euro. By placing the column as TDL suggests between "Deposited" and "Ref", I think this will also be sufficient enough to signal that the implementation laws were not deposited along with the treaty. It is important we signal that, as some readers otherwise accidently could be confused about it. If we place the column with some whitespace to the table (as in the current sandbox), this is a bullet proof message to readers that the treaty and the "implementation law" is two different legal documents with different enactment dates. For layout reasons, I however is ready to support the suggestion by TDL, that we place the column into the table between "Deposited" and "Ref", but only for as long as we have no signs of readers getting confused that we are indeed dealing with two seperate legal documents. Danish Expert (talk) 04:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe a better idea would be to move the "ref." column to right after the "AB" column, which is the end of what it is actually referencing anyways. That way we would go: AB; Ref.; Depositied Implementation Law. This might make the distinction clearer. One reason that I don't particularlly like the "separate column" idea (aside from asthetics) is for sortability reasons. I was thinking it would be nice to make this table sortable, so that it could be sorted either by country or by date of deposition. If the implementation law is in a separate table, it wouldn't get sorted along with the other columns. TDL (talk) 04:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you on that, and fully support we implement an AB>REF>DEPOSITED>IMPLEMENTATION order of columns. I also support your idea of making the table sortable (if possible). Danish Expert (talk) 16:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The table is sortable; it does not consist of two tables but, only one fully sortable table. I added the visible implementation law column and an invisible column of two white spaces in between it and the other columns, which also puts bold border where it's needed. :P I didn't include the implementation column into the other visible columns, because the ref's are about the ratification. I intended to separate ratification from implementation. Also, i added the <div> to navigate left and right on the table, since it's not fitting into most screens. The table can be easily made sortable by changing "wikitable" into "wikitable sortable". Also, I added the different implementation statuses as notes, in the format already used, but, could also make them into single letters instead of numbered notes, linked or not. Please state again your opinions, and i will make the required changes. Heracletus (talk) 06:27, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that's a clever way to keep the table sortable. Perhaps it would be better if the "invisible columns" were black or something. That way we could see them, but they would mark a clear separation between the two tables. Other than that it looks great! TDL (talk) 06:37, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

However, if the table needs to be sortable, it needs A LOT of tweaking... I tried to see how it would look like, and because of the use of "rowspan" a lot of rows change. Changing this into making it look properly involves adding a lot of code, as far as i understand. More info can be found here WP:SORT. Heracletus (talk) 06:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I assumed this would indeed be the case, as per my own failed attempts in the past to circumvent the troubles of getting "wikitable sortable" to work with rowspans. I hoped you had a few tricks up in the sleeve. As this is not the case (and no solution description so far has been uploaded to wikipedia), I am afraid it is not possible. In regards of the column's placement I support your latest layout, as moving the REF coloumn to the left would anyway also have meant it had to be coloured green to avoid colour confusion (which would have reduced its standout position from the rest of the data coloumns). Danish Expert (talk)

For the other matters: (1) I prefer the layout with white space rather than black space, (2) After a second consideration plus your add of <div> for small screens to scroll - I now also have the oppinion we should list full worded "law types" in the column instead of footnotes. Reason for my second oppinion is that we can do it with very few words (without clotting up the table), and that I think its more convenient for the coloumn to carry it in full rather than as footnotes (because otherwise editors each time need to scroll down to footnotes to read it - which becomes a little bit too troublesome). When given in full you will get a quicker overview of the content. I have implemented the new alternative proposal in the sandbox, so that you can preview how it looks. BTW I one month ago added the needed link for the Finnish implementation law, and for Poland they have a constitutional fiscal law but will not update it to be compliant with the treaty before euro adoption (hence I changed the colour from green to red). Danish Expert (talk) 10:51, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

MOS:SCROLL says scrolling tables should not be used. While I'm not opposed to using "Ordinary" or "Constitutional" in the table (as opposed to Yes or No), all the other details should go in footnotes as it just bloats the table.

Also, with "invisible columns" the table is confusing as the grid lines do not extend all the way from state name to "Implementation law". Colouring the the columns black would connect them and make it look like a "BIG" gridline. TDL (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Apart from not liking visually the idea for a black column, I don't really have a specific opinion on the rest. I also am not sure about Poland myself. Since you edited the sandbox, add the Finnish implementation law link, too, please, Danish Expert. Heracletus (talk) 22:34, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Black in particular is visually bad, or any colour is bad? A problem with the current layout is that with my current screen size, I'd never even know that there was another column. The ref column is right at the edge of my page, and the white space makes it look like the table is done. Only once I scroll right do I discover that there is more to the table. Do we really need these invisible columns at all? I think we should either colour them (say darkgray), or get rid of them and use a black gridline to separate the last column. TDL (talk) 00:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

White space seperates better than a thick black line. A thick black line will also seperate, but not as visually efficiently as white space does. I personally still prefer the white space (for screens where everything is visible). The choice of having white/black inbetween is however only a small question of detail for me. TDL has a good point by stating we should also consider functionality issues for "small screens", and on that basis I am ready to support implementing a thick black/darkgrey gridline instead of white-space. In any case, I will suggest in order to reduce the overall table width, that we return to use the short date format for all data columns; meaning that we abbreviate 1 September 2013 into 1 Sep 2013. Danish Expert (talk) 05:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

MOS:SCROLL is a policy which discaurages the use of Scrolling Lists (automatically hiding a part of the content). It does not in any way prevent or discourage the use of the <div> code implemented by Heracletus to automatically create a wide table scrolling functionality for small screens. This is all good, and should not be changed. In regards of your counter proposal to turn all parenthesis in the last column into individual footnotes, this will not help to reduce the width/height of the column, but only contribute negatively to the articles layout by creating a bulky list of footnotes. This is why I prefer we stick with my proposal not to convert all the parenthesis into footnotes. Danish Expert (talk) 05:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Please see the definition of a Help:Scrolling list. They specifically state <div> is how to create a scrolling list. Such formatting is not permitted, so I'll remove it. TDL (talk) 20:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but actually Help:Scrolling list explicit in its lead say "wide templates and category content tables also may be scrolled." By effect our wikitable function as a "wide template" as it can be converted into such a format without changing the content/layout. Based on that I think it is OK to use the code. If we do not use it, I think the wikitable in normal circumstances will attempt to automatically adjust column widths with the content being asked to display at more lines in each cell (when being displayed on small screens). According to my own experience this however not always work as good as one could hope, meaning that sometimes one or two columns accidenly will exceed the borderlines of the viewed webpage (despite of the wikitable's auto-adjust attempt). The <div> code implemented by Heracletus was a solution to improve the tables layout for "small screens". If you think we should not use it, then please give us an argued reason why it is better without. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 13:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure, any content can in principal be moved to a template, but that isn't the point of the policy. The point of MOS:SCROLL is that such functionality doesn't work on many devices. We want to make the article WP:ACCESSIBLE to as many as possible, hence we should avoid using formatting which often fails. If there's too much content in the table, we should address that problem as opposed to trying to avoid it with technical tricks. If you disagree, you're welcome to start a discussion at WT:Manual of Style to clarify the appropriate uses of <div>. TDL (talk) 22:47, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Heracletus added the <div> code to make the table better accesible by devices/computers with small screens. For the use in the current version of our wikitable it would only be activated if you have a screen less than 17" (or a very big text fond). So for the majority of readers (incl. myself) it would never be activated. Personally I do not care if the code is there or not. I just want as many as possible to fully enjoy reading the table. If what you say is correct, that a significant amount of small screen devices will not display a part of the table if we use the code (and that it is not just a matter of the code not being activated -leaving all content visible by scrolling the normal standard way on the device), then I of course vote we should not do so. I just wonder why the code then has been allowed for the use in "Wide templates"? As I have no small screen to test with (where the <div> code do not work as it is supposed to do), I have now submitted the policy question for a respond at Talk:Manual of Style as you suggested. Once again it is not a high priority for me to have it implemented, but if it only improve things without destoying anything I think we should implement it without any hesitation. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 14:27, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the issue lies with browsers and css... However, most (major or not) browsers have implemented now this element of css. I have a small screen and it works fine, as I use the chrome browser. Generally speaking, the use of overflow clipping set to auto is quite common in wikipedia. However, as the table is currently not as wide and as I personally don't like clipping either, I do not support debating on this issue anymore, except for reasons of policy clarification. Heracletus (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

As Heracletus said, the issue is with CSS and browsers (see MOS:ACCESS#Users_with_limited_CSS.2FJavaScript_support). While most new browsers support it, legacy browsers are more hit and miss. I'm just trying to follow the MOS here, so let's see what responses we get to the discussion you started. TDL (talk) 18:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

As my request for comments on the MOS talkpage did not return any reply within 10 days, and as my initial motivation to push for clarification only was feeded by a firm believe that Heracletus actually preferred the div code (based on his experience with a small screen device), I now also support not to use this code. Danish Expert (talk) 01:01, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Your suggestion to use "short date format" is a good space saving idea. However, how can you say that removing "(enacts a constitutional law in 2013)" won't reduce the table width? The column is twice as wide since you moved the footnotes into the cells. TDL (talk) 20:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

In my first update the parenthesises did not make the last column wider, but when I added the single one stating "(enacts a constitutional law in 2013)" you are correct it became a little wider. For your personal comfort, I am hower willing to change the parentheis to (will enact a law in 2013). I have just updated the table according to that, so you can have a look. If we convert all the parenthesises to footnotes, we will need to have a lot of them if we want to list the same details currently given by my added parenthesises. Personally I prefer the layout with small parenthesis in the table, rather than having a sub-forrest of footnotes providing the same kind of info. But if you/Heracletus continue not to like it (for whatever reason), I am ready to consider your arguments. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 14:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

After Heracletus earlier today transferred the new implementation column into the article, I took time to go through some of the data. Until now I checked the status for 5 countries (Finland+Poland+Slovenia+Spain+Sweden), and had to correct the data for 3 of them. For your notice, I have also enforced a "current status" criteria for the data, meaning that the background colour is either green/red according to what is currently both enacted + treaty compliant in the country. If a country currently has a fiscal budget law not being treaty compliant we simply note "Non-compliant" for the country (without giving any details about the non-compliant fiscal budget law they have). The type of submitted new implementation laws (yet to be enacted) will be noted in parenthesis for all countries having such data available. As a third overall reference for the column's title cell, I also consider to add our frequently updated reference from the European Parliament. It will take some time for me to go through it all, but I will start today and update the table as my work progress. Danish Expert (talk) 15:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I checked the two sources (well: scanned them), but couldn't find the "non compliant" info. Could someone indicate where that is? Furthermore, the table is now very much in a short-statement style, that is not clear. Those countries are not non-compliant, but their law is, and they have a year (or: years) to correct that. What is a short phrase to rectify that? "present law not compliant?" L.tak (talk) 20:54, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The title of the column states "Implementation law", so when the data line say "non compliant" then most people will understand it in the way, that the current "implementation law" is "non compliant". In order to make it even more clear that the column only deals with "implementation law" data (and not treaty data), I wonder if it would help on clarity if we re-introduce the white-space between the column and the rest of the table as originally proposed by Heracletus (see how it looks here in the sandbox)? Some countries already had implementation laws enacted prior of signing the Fiscal Compact as an instrument to achieve the countries fiscal targets. However after signing the Fiscal Compact it has been established that most of those implementation laws are non-compliant with the Fiscal Compact and needs to get updated with new laws to be Fiscal Compact compliant. Both in Sweden+Poland they have non-compliant laws and have decided not to update their pre-existing implementation laws to become Fiscal Compact compliant until the date where they adopt the euro (which legally is regulated by the fact that they -as a noneurozone country- have decided not to submit a declaration of intend to be bound of complying with this particular fiscal demand in the treaty -and thus are exempted). The current references for these decisions are respectively the Swedish law proposal and Polish law proposal submitted by the government to their respective parliaments (listed down in the ratification in progress subchapter), and when agreed+deposited this info will also be displayed by the Depositary ratification webpage (as no D=Declaration note will appear for those two countries). Hence, the parenthesis for both countries have noted "(awaits euro adoption)". Recently my first formulation said "(new law awaits euro adoption)", but as TDL launched a concern for having a to wide column I shortend it to the new version. Please let me know after looking at the sandbox version, if you would like a re-appearence of the initial white-space between the "implementation law" column and the table, and if this would be sufficient to gain clarity about the data (or if you think a bit longer formulated parenthesis is still called for). Best regard, Danish Expert (talk) 13:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

reaction in shorthand (not to be rude, as I should be doing other things, I have no time to fine tune...;-)): I like the separate column better, but that is not a principle point for me... Non-compliant is a very negative term, and having a non-compliant law, while not being forced to have one is a completely different interpretation than a cursory reader will get. So I am afraid we need a) remove the red colour (which has a very negative feeling, and suggests something should be done), some words extra ("implemented (ordinary), but not compliant?"). An alternative is to add a column "implementation deadline", which makes it a lot clearer if a country has "done their job" or not... (and did I miss it, but who says the Polish law is not not compliant? was that in 1 of the sources? or is that a European Commission thing?) L.tak (talk) 14:32, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks for quick reply. I myself also has to leave now. Later tonight I will consider your specific comments and reply. For a start I have re-added the whitespace as we are now three prefering this style, and because of the recent other efforts implemented to reduce the overall table width. In regards of Poland, the main source for this is the statement made by their Finance minister, who in May 2012 announced that he expected to submit a draft law for integration of the "golden budget rule" into their national legislation in the third quarter of 2012. Subsequently it was however confirmed both by the Polish EU affairs Committee in November and by the Polish law proposal in December, that Poland will not submit a declaration to the treaty's ratification because they wanted to continue operating with their existing fiscal implementation law until the date they adopted the euro. When I have time, I will go through the countries step by step and add the specific references into the column. As for now, I just so far did not have time to through ita all. :-) Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 14:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I can see that another IP editor yesterday changed the colour from red to yellow for Poland+Sweden as you suggested above. I welcome this change and agree with your argument above. I do not support your idea to list all the specific deadline's for implementation, as this in most cases will be redundant info (as the reader already can see that from the depositary dates noted in the table; and moreover for the first 14 countries with a deadline being 1 Jan 2014 the parenthesis in the implementation law column already denotes they will enact an implementation law in 2013 if not already having done so). In regards of your second proposal to write "Ordinary, but not compliant" instead of the current "Non-compliant", I also think most readers will not care about the type of non-compliant laws - as they in any case will not be directly related to the Fiscal Compact treaty. This is why I think that for the Non-compliant countries it will be better to omit this info from the column - also because it does not necessarily dictate if a new compliant implementation law will be ordinary/constitutional. It is easier and shorter for us just to write "Non-compliant (awaits euro adoption)". If you think clarification is still needed for the info, my counter proposal is to write "Non compliant (new law awaits euro adoption)". Danish Expert (talk) 14:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

As a sidenote here at the talkpage, I can inform you that Poland has a 55% debt-to-GDP ratio ceiling written into their constitution with a direct note that an ordinary law (Public Finance Act) will regulate how this should be implemented and understood in practise. Hence their implementation law is only ordinary and not constitutional. The pre-exisiting Polish debt-brake is also fully compliant with the Fiscal Compact's specific debt-brake provision. As the pre-existing implementation law however have not included regulations for the "Automatic correction mechanism" + "Independant fiscal advisory council" + "The new structural deficit rule", it however has a status of being Non-compliant with all of the treaty's fiscal requirements. As outlined by the governments ratification law, Poland plan at some unknown point in the future (when Poland adopts the euro) to enact a fully compliant law at the ordinary level - most likely through passing an amendment law for the Public Finance Act. Danish Expert (talk) 14:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

It is still not very consistent to me (although I agree that my proposals are also not always helping in that regard). The column is called "implementation law". Non compliant means then: "having an implementation law that is non-compliant", while it should mean "already having a law, which is not compliant". Furthermore "law awaits Euro adoption" reads to me that the law-proposal is already there, but awaits the adoption of the Euro later... I would propose to change non-compliant to "No", with a not thate there is already certain legislation there (in the consitution or outside). Law awaits... could be --> Not required before Euro (btw: is the Polish stance your reasoning based on reading the laws, or is that the conclusion of a specific source?). L.tak (talk) 15:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

OK. I have now changed the text to "No (not required before euro adoption)". At the moment the full status info for the Polish "implementation law" is included in the "Ratification in progress" chapter, and until the country has completed its ratification of the treaty (most likely in March 2013) it will be best to keep the info listed by that section. When ratification has been completed, I support your proposal to convert the info into a special footnote about the Implementation law status. My info listed above about Poland is basicly the extract from chapter 3 of the Polish Government's draft law (legal evaluation) for the ratification of the Fiscal Compact treaty. Danish Expert (talk) 18:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Great! I have added now a small spec (constitutional amendment and ordinary law), which should cater together sufficiently for the occasional reader that is more looking at the table than he is looking at the text. Feel free to revert if it's not ok... L.tak (talk) 00:10, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Personally I prefer only to write "Ordinary" instead of "Ordinary law" and "Constitutional" instead of "Constitutional amendment". Reason for this opinion is, that we should be careful not to fill up the table with too much text, and that I think (although this is solely based on my knowledge of how the Danish language works) that the English language actually permits us also to speak about a "Constitutional implementation law", and hence we do not need to extend it to say "Constitutional amendment - implementation law". NB: My add of "implementation law" into the given example is just to illustrate the grammatic argument, and will appear when we read the data line in conjunction with the column's title text. As it is not an issue of major importance to me, I however did not revert your changed formulation, and will leave it up to other editors to decide which one of the formulations should be used. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 08:40, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

He Danish Expert, that's exactly where our opinions differ: for me a "constitutional law" sounds silly (unless it's the law that "constitutes the constitution", i.e. for the first time) and inexact... anyway, I think we have found an acceptable conclusion the way it is now... L.tak (talk) 18:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand your point. My personal preference was only because it goes so well in the Danish language to say it in the "inaccurate way" (because the way the word is used in Danish imply that "Constitutional law" is equal to "Law amending the constitution). I fully accept your formulation, and think your contribution to clarify it was all good. Thanks a lot. Danish Expert (talk) 14:27, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I personally wouldn't consider either version inaccurate... In my mind, "constitutional" or "ordinary" would rather denote the relevant status, than serve as adjectives. Heracletus (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with Heracletus, I don't have a problem with either version, but dropping the "law" has the advantage of brevity. Either way, it's probably not worth arguing over. TDL (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Why was the full Irish ratification data removed from the wikitable?

As explained by the note listed in the subchapter, the deposit of ratification instruments for the treaty clearly awaited Ireland first to enact the related "implementation law" (or "statute bill"). By keeping the date lines for the "Statute bill" listed in the wikitable, it help readers to understand why the deposit in Ireland took so long, after receiving its presidential assent. This is why I think we should keep the lines in the table. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

We already have that info in the ratification process section. The corresponding dates are not that important. Heracletus (talk) 05:36, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

And the ratification in Germany awaited the constitutional court's decision, should we have a line for that? Should we have a line for the French election, which stalled ratification? As far as I can tell, there was no legal requirement for Ireland to pass the statue bill before depositing the instruments of ratification, they simply chose to wait so I don't see why it should be mentioned in the table. It's already covered in the relevant section. TDL (talk)

Point taken. I accept we can ommit the lines from the table per the arguments here at the talkpage. The reason I brought this topic up for debate at the talkpage in first place, was that another editor (Japinderum) on 2 January wanted and atempted to re-add the Irish lines according to how it was displayed in the past 6 months. He did not succeed as TDL removed it. I now fully support the argued and more well-thought view expressed here, that it is best to leave these lines out of the table. Danish Expert (talk) 03:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Why is the "French court decision" still listed as a subchapter note?

We already copied the note into a footnote comment, and it is redundant to list it again in the subchapter. The reason why it belongs to the footnote section, is that IT WAS NOT a court challenge but a part of the normal political process in France, where Hollande asked the court in-ante to decide if the treaty could be ratified and implemented by ordinary law and simple majority. The court replied yes to this, and then Hollande's government chose to submit a law proposal to the parliament following this approach. In France they are as a part of their standard political lawmaking process, very often using the court to give its legal advice prior of the government submitting a complicated law proposal to the parliament. In other states, they are using a "Council of State" to submit legal advise. This is why the decision by the French court does not count as an extraordinary "court challenge", with its own right to be highlighted in the subchapter for that. It is appropriate as a footnote (precisily as it stands now), as this shortly explain why the "majority needed" ended at 50% in France. But it should be removed as a point from the subchapter "Constitutional court challenges", as it was not a court challenge. Danish Expert (talk) 17:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree, you may remove it. Heracletus (talk) 05:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, this makes sense. I'll go ahead and remove it. TDL (talk) 02:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)