Fallacies in Embracing a Silent European Public: A Post Lisbon Treaty Analysis

On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon replaced the Treaty of Nice as the legal foundation of the European Union. The round of treaty reform that eventually produced the Treaty of Lisbon started off with a Europe-wide debate, adventured into a Constitution-making process, and came to a halt when French and Dutch voters rejected the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. It was with an approach radically different from the one used in the making of the Constitutional Treaty yet comfortably in line with the routine treaty-reform business of the Union that essence of the Constitutional Treaty was rescued. This article compares the approaches adopted in the making of the Constitutional Treaty and the making of the Treaty of Lisbon in terms of the degree to which the public was allowed or encouraged to play a role. It further discusses the implications of this detour of treaty-reform process for future developments of European integration and concludes that the continual exclusion of the public from policy-making and treaty-reform constrains rather than facilitates integration.