On December 13, 2007. leaders of the 27 European Union nations met in Portugal`s capital to sign a new treaty amendment called the Lisbon Treaty. This document has now been forwarded to the Member State governments. It fully ratified, it will amend th...
On December 13, 2007. leaders of the 27 European Union nations met in Portugal`s capital to sign a new treaty amendment called the Lisbon Treaty. This document has now been forwarded to the Member State governments. It fully ratified, it will amend the EU`s two primary constituent treaties, the Treaty Establishing the European Community(EC Treaty) and the Treaty on European Union(TEU). This new Treaty was born out of the Union`s failure to ratify the 2004 Constitution, which would have completely superseded the current Treaties. After the Constitution`s rejection in French and Dutch referenda in 2005, and after two years of unsuccessful salvage attempts, the European Council officially scrapped the controversial document in June of 2007. At the same time the heads of state declared their intention to move forward with a new treaty amendment that would contain most of the Constitution`s substantive and procedural innovations. From that resolve the Lisbon Treaty was drafted and signed during the second half of 2007. exactly, on 13th December 2007.
The main changes which the Lisbon Treaty would introduce, once ratified, into the EU Treaty, renamed `Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union`, relate to the structure and the institutions of the EU. The constitutional symbols are left aside, the core of the Constitutional Treaty is preserved. Thus, the Lisbon Treaty would not contain any terminology referring to a `Constitution`, would not mention the symbols of the Union as they were referred to in Article Ⅰ-8 of the Constitutional Treaty, would not include any provision affirming that Union law shall have primacy over the law of Member States, and would not reproduce the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 7th December 2000. In addition to this examination, I study about changing the institutional system(President, European Council, the office of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, etc) and analyze them constitutionally.