What will Lisbon change exactly?

Panel discussion in Brussels on implementing the treaty's reforms

Discourse in Brussels: Markus Ferber, member of the European Parliament, Eberhard Sinner, member of Bavaria's State Parliament, Sebastian Kurpas of the European Commission's Secretariat-General, and the foundation's Thomas Fischer (left to right).

Source: Bertelsmann Stiftung

Speaking to the audience and other panel members, Ferber said that, in his opinion, the game of "Who's Going to Become What" currently popular in Brussels is actually distracting from the more important question of which steps have to be taken in order to implement the treaty's provisions as quickly as possible. The main changes, he said, are the transparent and democratic decision-making structures the treaty foresees, in particular the expansion of the European Parliament's role in decision-making processes. The EU has retained its ability to take action even with 27 members, he noted, something that would remain true should new members join following the Lisbon Treaty's implementation. Ferber also spoke about the heated public debate on European politics taking place in Germany, saying he was relieved the many calls to mandate a leading role for national governments via their national parliaments did not get off the ground.

Sinner said he views the treaty's changes as a basis for making Europe more capable of responding to future challenges in a globalized world. He criticized the Euroskeptics' at time aggressive tone and called on Europe's institutions to carry out media campaigns and to make use of information centers as a way of helping the public better understand what the EU is all about. The Lisbon Treaty, he said, will result in new methods of interaction between the EU, on the one hand, and national governments and state- and local-level actors, on the other. In addition, it would give the legally binding principle of subsidiarity more bite, he said.  

Kurpas said synergies capable of increasing the EU's coherence are clearly present in the efforts to avoid duplicate structures within the Union, such as the consolidation of the roles of high representative for foreign policy and commissioner for foreign relations. At the same time, he said, how actors interact at the European level must continue to be based on consensus, something that should inform the opportunities made possible by the Lisbon Treaty for majority decisions in the Council of Ministers. This will certainly not happen in all possible cases, he said, even if the treaty's changes will increase pressure on governments to achieve a consensus within the Council in each of the areas in which the treaty foresees a transition from unanimous decision making to qualified majority voting.

The subsequent open discussion was marked by a skeptical tone as audience members criticized the technocratic manner in which the Lisbon Treaty is being implemented. As several participants remarked, during the coming implementation phase the EU again runs the risk of confirming all the reservations many people have about the integration process. Namely, as a result of the treaty's new provisions, which are bound to become even less comprehensible as time goes by, the Union is likely to seem yet again like a bureaucracy-prone regulatory machine that has lost sight of its founding principles. Other participants noted it is still hard to know whether the institutional reforms spelled out in the Lisbon Treaty will lead to long-term improvements, and only once the implementation phase is complete, a process that will take several years, will it become clear whether the changes are effective on a practical level -- and whether they produce a European Union that is not only more capable of taking action, but more democratic as well.