Abstract
Signed in 2007 and entered in force in 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon is in fact the combination of two pieces of legislation. The first one is a new version for the Treaty of the European Union (TEU). The second one is a replacement of the former Treaty of the European Community (TEC) to the new Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
It was a new breath s for the institutional structure of the European Union (EU). Indeed, Maastricht and Amsterdam were already out of date. The Treaty of Nice was more an "emergency strap" with little institutional outcomes. Last but not least, it permitted the European Union to reach a "solution" after the failure of the European Constitutional Treaty of 2005 and the rejection of France and the Netherlands.
The birth of this Treaty took several years. After the 2005 French and Dutch referendums, the Council decided to halt the Constitutional Treaty ratification process. A new solution has been found in the summer of 2007 to mainly, converting Constitutional reforms into a "traditional" treaty for the EU. We are still under the "experiment stage" for this Treaty. Put in place after the 2009 European elections, Lisbon entered into force in December 2009.
The euro crisis, adding the "EU bashing" from some member States, the UK potential in or out referendum, the Budget negotiations illustrate how it is complicated to analyse deeply and correctly how Lisbon reforms were put in place and how they changed the game in EU politics. Nonetheless, this gap between "theory and practice" should come to an end and today we can see or at last make hypothesis for the Treaty of Lisbon outcomes. So, can we really state that indeed, the Lisbon Treaty and its outcomes clarified the EU decision-making? Did it cure, at least relatively, cure the lack of democratic accountability, coherence and efficiency in the European Union?
