Interview: Lisbon Treaty ‘not as necessary as we thought’

The EU has continued to function as well as it ever did following the ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004, Professor Anand Menon, from the University of Birmingham’s European Research Institute, told EURACTIV.sk in an interview, expressing his scepticism over the real need for the Lisbon Treaty.

While conceding that he had once argued against the EU’s enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe because he thought “it would lead to gridlock,” Menon, the author of the recently published book ‘Europe: The State of the Union”, admits he was “totally wrong”.

The divisions that have been apparent within the EU since the fifth enlargement took place in 2004 have not occurred between “old” and “new” members, but rather remained among the bloc’s older members over specific pieces of legislation. “Even under the procedures of the Nice Treaty, the enlarged European Union is functioning fine […] Voting in the Council indicates that the EU has not slowed down at all. It is producing legislation with the same speed as before. There isn’t an institutional crisis to be addressed,” Menon insists.

Instead, he points out that with more members on board, the EU has witnessed a phenomenon – also evident in the USA on occasions – whereby member states tend to lean more toward central institutions.

Nevertheless, Professor Menon conisders the “yellow card procedure”, which would give national parliaments a say on draft Commission proposals, to be an important innovation of the Lisbon Treaty. He believes involving national parliaments in European decision-making would significantly help the process by breeding the understanding that the Union is organically linked to national political systems. 

“In an age when people are very sceptical about Europe, this kind of link is very important,” he argues.

On the other hand, Professor Menon expressed his doubts over the most visible innovations of the Lisbon Treaty, namely the creation of the post of permanent President of the Council (see our  on ‘Choosing Mr. Europe’) and the new external service. “We cannot be sure how they’ll work,” he noted.

To read the full version of the interview, please click here.

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