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Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca --- "Introduction: After the Treaty is Before the Treaty" [2012] ELECD 510; in Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca (eds), "The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Law and Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Treaty of Lisbon and the Future of European Law and Policy

Editor(s): Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857932556

Section Title: Introduction: After the Treaty is Before the Treaty

Author(s): Trybus, Martin; Rubini, Luca

Number of pages: 12

Extract:

Introduction: After the Treaty is before
the Treaty
Martin Trybus, Luca Rubini, and the authors

On 1st December 2009, after a second Irish referendum and the signature of
the Czech and Polish presidents, the Treaty of Lisbon finally entered into
force. The journey to this new version of the Treaty on European Union
and the new Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union had been a
long one. Following the ground-breaking Treaty of Maastricht 1992 and
the reforming Treaties of Amsterdam 1997 and Nice 2000, the European
Union had embarked on an ambitious process towards a `constitution'.
However, the Constitutional Treaty, carefully prepared by the Constitu-
tional Convention from 2001 to 2003, and signed by the Member States in
2004, was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005. This
prompted the formal abandonment of the Constitutional Treaty, a `period
of reflection', and finally, in 2007, the Treaty of Lisbon, which successfully
completed its ratification process in all 27 Member States in November
2009. In early 2012 the impacts of the changes involved in the new Treaty
are only beginning to be felt.
While abandoning its `constitutional decorum',1 the new Treaty on
European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European
Union contain most of the substantial changes envisaged in the Constitu-
tional Treaty. The European Community ceases to exist and is replaced by
the European Union, which has international legal personality. The three
pillar structure of the Union is formally abolished, affecting ...