Treaty of Lisbon

The Treaty of Lisbon (originally also called the EU Basic Treaty or Reform Treaty, Portuguese Tratado de Lisboa) is an international treaty between the member states of the European Union.

The Lisbon Treaty was signed in Lisbon on 13 December 2007 under the Portuguese Presidency and entered into force on 1 December 2009.

The Treaty of Lisbon reformed the Treaty on European Union (EU Treaty) and the Treaty establishing the European Community (EC Treaty), which was renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU); it also amended the Euratom Treaty by Protocol No 2 (see Article 4(2)).

The full title of the Treaty is 'Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community', published in OJ 2007/C 306/01, as last notified by printing the consolidated texts in OJ 2012/C 326/01.

In terms of content, the Treaty of Lisbon took over the essential elements of the EU Constitutional Treaty, which had been rejected in a referendum in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Unlike the Constitutional Treaty, however, it did not replace the EU and EC Treaties, but merely amended them.

Among the innovations of the Lisbon Treaty were the legal merger of the European Union and the European Community, the extension of the co-decision procedure to police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, the greater involvement of national parliaments in EU lawmaking, the introduction of a European Citizens' Initiative, the new post of President of the European Council, the extension of the powers of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the establishment of a European External Action Service, the legally binding nature of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the first regulation of an EU exit. Prior to the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU and EC Treaties had last been amended by the Treaty of Nice of 2003 and by the accession of new member states in the meantime. The provisions on EU military missions from the Treaty of Nice were extended, thus developing the economic alliance into a defence alliance.

The ratification of the Treaty encountered difficulties in several Member States. In particular, a negative referendum in Ireland in summer 2008 delayed the original timetable. Following a repeat of the referendum in autumn 2009, the Treaty finally entered into force on 1 December 2009.

Structure

Behind the EU Constitutional Treaty signed in 2004 had been the concept of repealing all existing EU treaties (Art. IV-437 TEU) and replacing them with a single text called "Constitution". However, after the Constitutional Treaty was defeated by referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005, this objective was explicitly abandoned in the mandate given in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Conference on the Reform Treaty. Instead, the substance of the Constitutional Treaty was incorporated into the existing treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty is therefore an "amending treaty", consisting essentially of the changes adopted to the previous treaties. It is structured as follows:

The EU thus continues to be based on several treaties. The most important of these are the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC), which was renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) by the Treaty of Lisbon. This name change occurred because, due to the changed structure of the EU, the European Community no longer existed as an institution with its own name; all its functions were taken over by the EU.

In addition to the two main treaties, other documents to which the EU Treaty refers are part of EU primary law. These are 37 protocols and 2 annexes (cf. Art. 51 EU Treaty) as well as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (cf. Art. 6 para. 1 EU Treaty). In addition, according to Art. 6 (2) of the EU Treaty, the EU is to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The 65 declarations annexed to the Final Act and the "Explanations on the Charter of Fundamental Rights" do not form part of the treaties in the absence of a special order and thus do not belong to primary law. However, both serve as an aid to interpretation (within the meaning of Article 31 (2) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) and can be used, for example, to support court decisions. The declarations annexed to the Treaty of Lisbon clarify positions of individual or all Member States on certain aspects.

Chronology