- 2009: Lisbon Treaty
Signed in December 2007, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on December 1 2009, ending several years of institutional debates on the European Union. It was drafted to replace the Constitutional Treaty that had failed to be ratified. Like the Constitutional Treaty before, the Lisbon Treaty aimed to increase consistency and coherence within the EU. Some problematic issues that had impeded the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty have been removed or adapted:
- so-called "High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy" , responsible in the Council for the EU's common foreign and defence policies.
- chair of the EU's External Relations Council
- Vice-president of the European Commission.
- responsible for coordinating the Commission's external actions to ensure consistency and coherence between all of EU external actions
- supported by a European External Action Service, made up from officials from both the Council and the Commission as well as civil servants from the EU Member States.
- European Council presidencies has a full-time European Council President for a period of two-and-a-half years
- Reduction of the number of Commissioners (applicable from 2014) – this provision was dropped after Ireland failed to ratify the Treaty and indicated that the Irish people would ratify in a referendum if the smaller countries kept their commissioner (despite the Commissioners being obliged to act in the name of the EU and not their country)
- Weighting of votes by Member States (applicable from 2014)
- Extension of the scope of qualified majority voting to new areas.
The Lisbon Treaty is, contrary to the Constitutional Treaty, only divided into two parts: The Treaty on European Union (general provisions) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (specific objectives of the EU’s policies.
