Brussels, 09/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - The Lisbon Treaty should have been called a “constitutional treaty” and entail the creation of the post of “EU foreign affairs minister”, but its tormented ratification process called for “many concessions of an essentially formal kind”. Pietro Calamia, the former permanent representative for Italy with the European Communities, takes this view in his “retrospective look at the Treaty of Lisbon” published in the Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali edited by Maria Grazia Melchionni (Volume 78, No2, via Bruxelles 20, 00198 Rome). Calamia speaks of the difficult road leading to the treaty adopted on 13 December 2007 in Lisbon before it took effect on 1 December 2009, a road which, after its beginnings at the European Council of Laeken in December 2001, took nearly a decade to cover, and was highlighted by moments such as the Convention chaired by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from March 2002 to July 2003, which resulted in the signing of the constitutional treaty on 29 October 2004, in Rome. The ratification procedure was then interrupted, however, by “no” votes at the referendums of spring 2005 in France and the Netherlands, and a “period of reflection” was needed to reactivate a new intergovernmental conference aimed at drafting a “simplified” treaty, Calamia recalls in his useful short historical account of the new treaty. A further “no” at the Irish referendum in June 2008 had brought about the adoption by the European Council of a decision relating to the concerns of the Irish people (mainly “right to life”, taxation and neutrality of Ireland), and it was not until after another referendum in Ireland, in October 2009, that ratification of the treaty was possible.
On substance, Pietro Calamia considers that the Lisbon Treaty “does not break away from the existing Community texts” and, on the strength of his knowledge of these texts and the development of the European edifice, he notes that the main advances made by the new treaty still hold fast. In particular, he underlines the “highly interesting development” of the post of high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, although that person is not known as “minister”. In the dual structure of the Community institutions, he believes, this is an absolute innovation that seems to confirm aspirations of a single Union executive. With entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (Ed: especially laborious with regard to the high representative, who is also vice-president of the Commission), the EU entered a running-in phase for the new institutions, for the legislative codecision procedure and for the new structures of foreign policy, security and defence policy, as well as for the possibility of resorting to forms of enhanced cooperation between several member states, Calamia explains. He goes on to conclude on a positive note saying that this last angle, in a Europe destined to take in new members, may help the European Union progress along the complex road that is before it. (mg/transl.jl)