Not quite six months in place, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty has already led to a significant shift in the Brussels power landscape, with many of its main actors still trying to find their feet in the new order.
The new rulebook, in force since December 2009 after many years of negotiation and then ratification, greatly increases MEPs’ co-legislating powers and creates a beefed up foreign policy post and a president of the EU council.
But many of its effects were not written into the treaty and are only slowly coming to light as the EU capital goes about its daily business.
The changes have led to a relative decrease in the power of the European Commission, in past times the engine of EU integration, and the Council of Ministers, representing member states. In contrast, the European Council – the union’s collected premiers and presidents and now an institution with its own budget and president – and the parliament are are winning out in the power stakes, say academics.
This has been most evident in the current debate over increased economic governance in the EU, where member states, rather than the commission, have taken the lead in the discussions.
Referring to the “competitive environment” among EU institutions now, European studies Professor Joerg Monar, from the College of Europe, says the parliament and the European Council are the “primary poles of power” in the EU. The commission meanwhile appears “more and more squeezed” between the two.
“The European Council has become the true policy-maker of the European Union,” agreed the University of Bologna’s Professor Lucia Serena Rossi during a conference discussing the post-Lisbon Treaty EU on Tuesday (25 May).
