Concepts were supposed to be an important new feature in C++0x. They were meant to allow programmers to specify properties (like constraints) for templates, allow compilers to do some optimization and tools to do some formal checking on the code. After years of debate, the standard committee found them “untried, risky and controversial” and ruled them out last month during their meeting in Frankfurt.
Danny Kalev, a former member of the C++ standard committee, wrote about this controversial removal, and later interviewed Bjarne Stroustrup about the concepts and the future of C++. You can read this interview, published on DevX.com, here.
You can find more about concepts in this paper by Bjarne Stroustrup.