By Sander Luitwieler

At the moment the Lisbon Treaty is about to be discussed in Dutch parliament, which hopes to have dealt with it before the summer reces. Contrary to 2005, there is this time no majority in parliament in favour of a referendum. The Irish Republic is having a referendum in the first half of June. Allthough everyone strives for the treaty to enter into force in January of 2009, the ratification process might take longer and it is most certainly not a closed deal. It takes only one country saying no and the treaty will not come into force. We have allready witnessed this with the Constitution, which the Lisbon Treaty replaces. The Constitution was meant to replace two founding treaties of the EU, that have been ammended many times, the last time being the Nice Treaty in 2000. The two founding treaties are the Treaties of Rome (1957) and Maastricht (1992).

The Lisbon Treaty will make some aspects of the EU more efficient, transparent and democratic, but the overall picture of the new treaty is less favorable, because of a lack of choices by the European leaders. The Lisbon Treaty effectively maintains and reinforces the intangible structure of the EU, in which power is shared between the respective European institutions in a peculiar, diffuse way.

More efficient?

It was attempted to make a number of European institutions respectively more efficient. For example by lowering the number of members of the European Commission and introducing a team presidency of three member states for the Council of Ministers, in stead of the current presidency of one member state. This raises the question though whether the entire structure will function better, for example because all kinds of new and existing presidents will work next to - and in competition with - each other: the Commission president, the new permanent president of the European Council, the new High Representative as president of the Council for Foreign Affairs and the rotating team presidency for the other formations of the Council. Their competences are not clearly determined and they could get in each others way.

More transparent?

Regarding transparency there are also some improvements, such as the new attribution of competences between the European and national level and the fact that Council meetings will become partially public. The over all picture is one of less transparency though. Because the Lisbon Treaty changes the existing  treaties and hence makes them more complicated, the entire treaty has become even more unreadable. In this regard the "Constitution", that was to replace the existing treaties, at least signified an improvement. Let alone that European citizens will comprehend better the way in which European institutions function and relate to each other. In the contrary. By maintaining the current institutional structure, implementing new changes and reinforcing some institutions simultaneously, the entirety  becomes even harder to graps or see through.

More democractic?

The same situation occurs when we take a look at how democratic the EU is. In this case too, the Lisbon Treaty introduces some improvements, like more say for the European Parliament with regard to the annual budget and more co-decision in the legislation process. If we look at the entire picture though, we should again admit that maintaining and reinforcing the current institutional structure creates problems in the areas of democratic controll and accountabillity. An important issue in this respect is that the Lisbon Treaty inforces the position of the European Council more, particularly compared to the position of the European Commission. Because it gets a permanent president and probably also as a consequence of the High Representative, that gets furthermore its own administrational apparatus. The European Council is the least transparent and democraticcally controlled institution and this problem only becomes more serious when power is concentrated in the hands of individuals.

Lack of transparency and democracy

That the European leaders have not made clear choices with regard to the structure of the Union and the direction of the integration process is bad enough. But they have also neglected to account for there choices - or lack thereof - towards their citizens. Such accountabillity would certainly not have misstood them in light of the 'crisis' the EU got in to after the 'no' of the French and Dutch voters. Successive Dutch governments can also be blamed for this, now also including the Christian Union. For a long time they have remained silent and then they pretended the contents of the constitution were 'dead' hiding behind differenes in form. The contents of the constitution have, for the main part, been taken in to the Treaty of Lisbon and are therefore quite 'alive'.

It is not only the structure of the Union that lacks transparency and democracy, but also the way in which European leaders shape the process of integration. Now both the structure and the process have become even more ungraspable. It would have been better if the European leaders had made fundamental choices and had clearly accountefor those choices towards the citizens. What has to go wrong before European leaders do learn this lesson?

Sander Luitwieler MA will conclude his thesis on the role of the Dutch government in establishing the Nice Treaty at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam this year. He studied Political Sciences at the University of LeidenLuitwieler was co-author of "Richting Europa" (Towards Europe, Christian-political vision on the European Union) in 2002 and author of the Europe chapter in the Christian Union programme for the parliamentary elections in 2006. This month his publication (in Dutch) "The Christian Union and the Treaty of Lisbon" will be published.

This article was originally published in Dutch in CV-Koers (Christians Today-Course) a Christian monthly in the Netherlands. Translation: ECPYN Secretariat