A year of living dangerously

A success, a failure or too early to tell?

Maroš Šefcovic, European commissioner for inter-institutional relations and administration.
Šefcovic says the fact that the Parliament has greater powers is leading to a widespread “change of culture”, something that member states will have to get used to. “Occasionally it seems that the treaty comes as a bit of a surprise to the member states that agreed it and ratified it,” he says.

Šefcovic believes that increased scrutiny by the Parliament has led to better legislative results. But he says MEPs need to use their powers carefully: “The Parliament has had to learn that new powers also entail new responsibilities. For example, the fact that sensitive trade files are made available to parliamentary scrutiny requires that certain confidentiality standards are observed.”

Reimer Böge, a centre-right German MEP and expert on EU budgetary affairs and inter-institutional agreements between the Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
The Lisbon treaty remains “a learning process in co-operation” between the EU institutions, says Böge. “You cannot expect that after one year things are working better. There is a tendency in certain national capitals to go back to more intergovernmental co-operation,” he says. “Of course, it is better than the Nice treaty, but the situation shows that you not only need a perfect treaty, you also need a willingness [on the part] of the institutions involved to fill the treaty with life.”

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group in the European Parliament.
Verhofstadt says the EU is at a “crucial moment”, with the treaty shaping relations between the EU institutions. “A new balance has been created. There are now more than 80 policy areas where we [MEPs] decide, which is double what it was in the past,” says Verhofstadt.

But the former Belgian prime minister believes that the European Commission has not adapted to life under Lisbon as well as the Parliament. “The Commission should come out of its corner fighting,” says Verhofstadt. “It is not a good thing that the Parliament is more ambitious than the Commission. We have to present proposals and ideas to the Commission, because they don't want to. That is not good. There is a danger that it is becoming a secretariat of the Council, instead of an institution that takes the lead.”

Ian Lesser, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.
The EU's global partners are still trying to work out how the treaty affects their ties with the bloc, says Lesser, an expert on transatlantic relations. “We are still not quite out of the period of trying to figure out exactly what the Lisbon treaty has meant for Europe, for European governance, for emerging European foreign policy,” he says.

“The sense one has from listening to the debate in Washington is that there is still a great deal of confusion about what it means.”

He says the US has had to adjust its approach to the new balance of power created by Lisbon. “The European Parliament has become very influential in policy areas of interest to the US, not least on questions of finance and trade.”

Lesser says the famous question posed by Henry Kissinger – when I want to phone the EU, whom do I call? – has still not been answered, but believes that may change. “More and more, the US foreign policy establishment understands that, in addition to key bilateral relations, the US is going to in the coming years start to pay more attention to the institutional relationship with Europe as a whole.”

Péter Györkös, Hungary's ambassador and permanent representative to the EU.
Hungary takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers on 1 January, and the country's ambassador to the EU says implementation of the new treaty has been “better than sceptics expected”.

But he says there is still a lot of work to do: “There is a qualitative change in the role of the European Parliament that we fully respect, but in certain cases we need more time for all institutions to understand better how to function under the Lisbon treaty. The budget is a clear example that we have a lot to do in this area.”

Györkös says the success of the treaty will depend on how well the EU institutions learn from their mistakes. “I don't think Lisbon in itself is a guarantee of being fit for global competition, because even with the best treaty you can fail and even with the worst institutional set-up you can succeed if you want to.”

Olivier Jehin, head of the Brussels office of the French Institute of International Relations.
Jehin says the EU and the member states still have “a lot of work to do” in implementing the Lisbon treaty. “We cannot speak of a success at this point,” he says. “There are so many things for the EU institutions and the member states to put in place.”

He says that as France and the UK are struggling with the effects of the financial crisis, the EU will have to look more and more to Germany for leadership.