Lisbon Treaty
The Lisbon Treaty is the name of the new Treaty
covering the European cooperation from 1 December 2009.
* A new voting
system moving powers from small to bigger member states will enter
into force from 2014.
* The Barroso II Commission was appointed in February 2010 according to the new rules which give much more power to the Commission President.
From now on member states can only put forward
the names of their Commissioners as suggestions. Under
the previous Nice Treaty member states could make
proposals. A
suggestion means that national governments can no longer insist on
their individual nominees being accepted.
The power to decide is now effectively with
the new Commission President, whose appointment must in turn
have the support of 18 of the 27 prime ministers and presidents,
representing at least 255 out of 345 weighted votes in the Council.
In
addition he must obtain the support of an absolute majority of
the European Parliament for the full college of
commissioners.
A special summit in November 2009 nominated a
permanent President of the European Council and a new foreign
minister who is also be a Vice-President of the European
Commission.
From 1 December 2009 many new laws can be decided
by qualified majority in the Council of Ministers. A list of
the 68 new areas which will be decided by qualified majority vote can
be downloaded from the front page of this euabc.
A new foreign and defence office employing 7000
diplomats is now being recruited and installed in the Charlemagne building in Brussels and in the 130 EU delegations to
other countries. There may now be more official EU
embassies.
The new post-Lisbon EU has legal
personality, allowing the EU to negotiate and enter into
international agreements with other states and international
organisations in all areas of its powers.
500 million citizens has been endowed with an
additional citizenship as EU citizens on top of their
national citizenship.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights is now legally
binding and offer the citizens competing rights and duties to
their national constitutions and the European Convention of Human
Rights.
HISTORY
The Lisbon Treaty was rejected in a referendum
in Ireland on 12 June 2008 by a
53.4% No and 46.6% Yes votes. The turnout was 53%.
On 2 October 2009 the Treaty was approved in a
re-run of the referendum after Ireland had obtained certain
"guarantees" from the Europan Council of prime ministers and
presidents. On this second occasion 67% of the voters said Yes
and 33% No, on a turnout of 58% of the electorate.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus was then put
under pressure to sign the Treaty to avoid a referendum in the UK,
which might have happened if a new Conservative administration had
been elected there before the Treaty was fully ratified.
On the morning of 3 November 2009 the Czech
Constitutional Court rejected a legal challenge to the Treaty from 17
Czech Senators. At 3 p.m. that day Klaus signed the Treaty.
At
the European summit on 29-30 November Klaus had obtained a promise of a
Czech opt-out from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and a
political guarantee that the so-called Benes Decrees from after
the Second World War would not be affected by possible rulings of the
EU Court of Justice under the Charter.
Many Czechs feared that the Lisbon Treaty
could be used by some Germans to lay claim to property which
they or their relations had lost when they were expelled
from Czechoslovakia after World War 2.
The British Conservatives wanted a referendum on
the Lisbon Treaty in the UK. This had been promised to British voters
before the last UK general election by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The
next British general election must be held by June 2010.
After the
Lisbon Treaty is ratified by the 27 member states, there is no scope
for further referendums on it. Any renegotiation of the Lisbon
Treaty requires unanimity amongst all 27 member states.
Despite the Irish No in June 2008 the
ratification process continued among the member states which had not
yet ratified the treaty at the time, encouraged by the Irish
Government.
This ongoing ratification process was formally confirmed
at an EU summit on 20 June 2008. Ireland was asked to consult
its own citizens internally and along with the other member
states to propose a solution to the Irish No. This was envisaged as
taking the form of various political declarations and guarantees,
which could be given without requiring any change in the Lisbon Treaty
itself.
Any such change would have required further ratification
of the change by all 27 member states and the prime ministers and
presidents wanted to avoid that at all costs, for it would have got
snarled up with the UK general election.
The Czech Government wrote a footnote to the
Council conclusions on their reservations and the possibility that
their constitutional court might hinder Czech ratification. All other
member states agreed that the ratifications should continue despite
the Irish No.
In December 2008 the European
Council met in Brussels and decided that
the Lisbon Treaty would enter into force on 1 January 2010 after
the European elections of June 2009.
The Irish Government offered to
have a re-run of Ireland's referendum in the autumn of
2009.
In June 2009 the European summit in Brussels
agreed the so-called Irish
guarantees. The Irish Government
held the re-run on 2 October 2009.
Further back, on 13 December 2007, the prime
ministers and presidents of the 27 member states had signed the
Lisbon Treaty as the new basic treaty on European
cooperation. This had been first approved at a summit in Lisbon on 19
October 2007.
After the signing process the text was put for
ratification in all member states with the aim of having the Treaty
enter into force on 1 January 2009. The Irish No delayed this for a year
The Lisbon Treaty contains the same legal
obligations as the proposed EU-Constitution, which
wasfirst approved by referendums in Spain and Luxembourg 20 February and 10 July 2005 and rejected by referendums in France and the Netherlands on 29 May
and 1 June 2005 respectively.
In Spain 76,7% voted yes, in Luxembourg 56,5%. In France 54,8% voted no, in The Netherlands 61,7%.
The first official name for the Lisbon Treaty was
the "Reform Treaty". This was formally changed by its
signature in Lisbon, after which it was called by the name of
that city.
The EU Constitution had been first adopted by the
Heads of State or Government on 18 June 2004. It was then solemnly
signed in Rome on 29 October 2004 as the "Treaty Establishing a
Constiutution for Europe".
However, following its rejection in the France
and Dutch referendums a "period of reflection" was
announced, together with the Commission's "Plan D - for
Democracy, dialogue and debate." During this time some other
states ratified the rejected constitution.
The then new German chancellor Angela Merkel
succeeded - through secret diplomacy - in reaching agreement on
restarting the "constitutional process". This was hailed in
the Berlin
Declaration (25 March 2007) on the 50th
anniversary of the orginal Treaty of Rome.
At the 21-23 June
2007 Summit Merkel concluded the German EU presidency with the
adoption of a detailed negotiation mandate for a new Intergovernmental
Conference. This laid down the detailed provisons of a new Treaty that
would legally be virtually identical with the rejected EU
Constitution.
The Intergovernmental
Conference started one month later, on 23
July 2007. The Portuguese presidency aimed at finalising the
negotiations for a special summit in Lisbon, on 18 -19 October 2007,
allowing for the revised and renamed constitution to be signed before
2008 so as to enter into force before the European elections in June
2009. The Irish No in June 2008 delayed this
timetable.
The Lisbon Treaty includes all operational
articles from the rejected EU Constitution, but it alters their
presentation radically. Instead of one comprehensive document that
would replace all the existing European Treaties, the
Lisbon Treaty amends the existing 17 basic EU treaties and many
accompanying protocols and declarations.
It thereby gives the EU
a constitution indirectly rather than directly. The EU's
constitutional law will thus continue to consist of a plethora of
treaties amending the founding treaties.
By amending the existing Treaties the Lisbon
Treaty gives the EU a Constitution of more than 3000 pages
compared to the 560 pages in the formally titled "Constitution
for Europe" of 2004, which the French and Dutch rejected in
2005.
Although it changes the name from "EU
Constitution" to "Lisbon Treaty" - strictly speaking the
Consolidated European Treaties as Amended by Lisbon - it does
not alter the jurispridence of the European Court, which has already
characterised the treaties as "the Constitutional Charter of a
Community of Law, a new legal order for the sake of which the States
have limited their sovereign rights" (Opinion
1/91).
The Lisbon Treaty deletes the constitution's article on the European symbols, such as the flag,
Europe Day, the motto and the common EU anthem, which had been in the
original "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe".
However, it was also stated that this deletion does not change the
status of any of the European symbols, which have been in
existence for years anyway without any formal basis in the European
Treaties.
The Lisbon Treaty moves Article I-6 of the
Constitution referring to the primacy of Community law to Declaration
No 17 attached to Lisbon. This Declaration recalls the existing case
law of the European Court, which states, for example, that EU
law cannot "be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however
framed" (Case 06/64 "Costa/ENEL").
The Lisbon Treaty contains the same number of new
policy areas that are made subject to voting by qualified
majority. They number 68 in
all.
The revised constitution now embodied in the
Lisbon Treaty abolishes the existing "three-pillar"
structure of the European Treaties - the area of the European
Community, in which supranational Community law prevails, and the two areas of foreign and security policy on the one hand and
crime, justice and home affairs policy on the other, where
member states cooperated on the basis of retained
sovereignty.
The Lisbon Treaty abolishes the European
Community and transfers all of its powers and institutions to the
constitutionally new post-Lisbon European Union. To enable this
to be done it gives legal personality to the European
Union in Article 47 TEU.
This makes it possible for the
Union to legislate internally as the European
Community had previously done and for the entire Union to act on the
international scene as a constitutionally integrated
entity.
It also establishes a common permanent President
of the European Council and an EU Foreign
Minister who will now be titled "The High
Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy".
This High Representative - formerly a post
held by Javier Solana, now by Lady Ashton - is also a Vice-President of the
European Commission.
The term European Community disappeared from all
treaty texts and is replaced by the term "Union". The Community
itself legally disappeared.
The Treaty confers on the citizens of the 27
member states an "additional" citizenship of the Union on top of their national citizenship. This is
similar to the internal dual citizenships possessed by citizens of
such classical federations as the USA and Federal
Germany.
The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is made
legally binding, allowing the EU Court to further develop the legal
principles and fundamental rights of the Union and its citizens. See
Art. 6 TEU.
Following the links below you will find two
comments on the Lisbon Treaty from two constitutional experts, Anthony
Coughlan from Ireland and Andrew Duff from the UK. One supported the
Treaty, the other did not.
You can also download the Consolidated
Treaties as Amended by the Lisbon Treaty in a readable version,
as well as some books giving relevant commentary.
Links
Different books for free at
and www.Bonde.com