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Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antanas Valionis, who participated in the negotiations on the EU Constitutional Treaty in Brussels on 18 November, maintains that any changes to this document are subject to the EU Member States’ ratification. At the negotiations, the EU foreign ministers discussed the ways of changing the EU Constitutional Treaty in the future. The draft EU Constitutional Treaty presented by the Convention suggests stipulating that any amendments of this document in the future should be ratified by all the EU Member States. Several suggestions have been forwarded to the Intergovernmental Conference to facilitate certain amendments of the EU Constitutional Treaty, i.e. to eliminate the need to ratify them in the Member States. In Minister Valionis’ belief, any changes of the EU Constitutional Treaty should be ratified by the EU Member States. “The ratification guarantees the stability and legitimacy of the EU Constitutional Treaty,” the Chief of the Lithuanian Diplomacy stated. The ministers also discussed the possibility recognised in the draft EU Constitutional Treaty to change the order of voting in the European Council of Ministers. If this draft were approved, in certain cases the EU State and Government leaders would adopt decisions by qualified majority voting. The Lithuanian Foreign Minister supported Italy’s proposal to include the national parliaments into this process. “Italy’s proposal that one third of the Union’s national parliaments could veto changes in the order of voting in the European Council of Ministers would ensure the democracy and transparency of the adopted decisions,” Antanas Valionis stated.