The Treaty of Lisbon – key elements

• Institutions

The European Council wins full status as a decision-making body. It will have a full-time president serving up to two terms of two and a half years each, partly replacing the current system of a six-month rotating presidency. The president will chair the four annual European Council meetings as well as EU summits with international partners. But for meetings of the Council of Ministers other than foreign ministers’ sessions, which will be chaired by the new high representative for foreign and security policy, member states will continue to rotate the chairmanship.

Names in the frame for the president of the European Council: Tony Blair, former UK prime minister, Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland, Joschka Fischer, former German foreign minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, and Wolfgang Schüssel, former Austrian chancellor.

• High representative for foreign and security policy

The new high representative will also be a vice-president of the European Commission in charge of external relations. The new ‘High Rep’ will chair meetings of foreign ministers and can make proposals in the field of foreign policy following a request from the European Council. He/she will head an External Action Service to help implement policy and represent the EU abroad, made up of officials from the European Commission, the Council Secretariat and diplomats seconded from member states.

Names in the frame: Javier Solana, current high representative for foreign policy and Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister.

• The European Commission

The Commission will be reduced in size from 2014 so that only two-thirds of member states would have a commissioner, compared to one per member state at the moment. With 27 member states, that would mean 18 commissioners. The Commission president will be chosen taking into account the results of the European Parliament elections in 2009.

Names in the frame: too early to say, but José Manuel Barroso would like a second term.

• The European Parliament

The Parliament will have 750 members plus a president, with no country having more than 96 seats and none having fewer than six. The allocation of seats follows the principle of degressive proportionality with Italy being entitled to one more deputy (72) than a strict application of the principle would have produced.

• National parliaments

National parliaments will have eight weeks to respond to Commission proposals and, if a third of national parliaments asks the Commission to redraft proposals, the Commission must take this into account.

• Voting

In 2014 the EU will move to a system of ‘double majority’ voting where decisions have to be backed by 55% of member states representing 65% of the EU’s population. On request, the current system of voting weights and threshold for a majority, under the Nice treaty, can be continued until 2017.

In addition, where a group of member states making up 75% of a blocking minority either in terms of number of states or of the EU’s population so requests, the Council has to try to find broader support for a decision, within a reasonable time and while respecting current deadlines for decision-making. The threshold changes to 55% after 2017.

Decision-making in an estimated 68 policy areas will be taken by qualified majority voting (QMV). These include: trade policy (approving international agreements negotiated by Commission), energy policy and climate change, legislative acts and implementing rules in a range of policy areas including structural funds, own resources, multiannual financial framework, diplomatic and consular protection, financial measures in the fight against terrorism, intellectual property protection, border control management, integration of immigrants, judicial and police co-operation in civil matters and judicial co-operation in criminal matters, services of general economic interest, health and tourism. Decisions in policy areas where QMV applies will be jointly made by the member states and the European Parliament, under the co-decision procedure.

• Justice and home affairs

The current third pillar intergovernmental form of decision-making, in which decisions are taken by member states with little involvement of the European Commission, Parliament and the European Court of Justice, is abolished and most areas are moved to the ‘Community method’ based on proposal from the Commission, co-decision with European Parliament and QMV in the Council.

The UK and Ireland can opt out from such legislation. The European Court of Justice will have competence over decisions that were taken under the third pillar five years after the entry into force of the new treaty. The UK can have a further opt-out from the court’s jurisdiction on third pillar measures after the five-year transition period.

The UK and Ireland will have to announce their wish to opt out from measures related to the Schengen control-free travel areas. The European Council can decide to exclude them from participating in legislation and make them pay financial penalties if by opting out they render action inoperable.

• Charter of Fundamental Rights

The charter will be solemnly proclaimed by the heads of the three EU institutions and published in the Official Journal. It will be legally binding and used for the interpretation and implementation of EU laws by the EU institutions. The UK and Poland have a protocol which stipulates that the charter will not confer any new rights in national law.

EU leaders reached a deal on the new Treaty of Lisbon early on Friday morning (19 October) after eight hours of tortuous negotiations had resolved problems raised by Italy and Poland.

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