In 2007, the Lisbon Treaty was signed and came into force in 2009, clarifying the division of competences between the EU and its member states, subsequently granting the EU legal personality and providing for the first time a formal procedure for a member state to withdraw from the EU – Yahoo News UK.
Enlargement was one of the reasons regularly put forward by advocates of reforming the EU’s institutions, treaties and budget, but it was far from the only one.
Now the war in Ukraine, the digital and energy transition, the fight against climate change and social inequalities have served as the kind of challenges to the EU that require the EU to focus more specifically on action, according to the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in its report “EU Treaties: Why they need targeted changes.”
Internal reform and enlargement have been recurring items on the agenda of the European institutions in recent years, and attention to the issue was particularly heightened when the European Parliament gave the green light to proposals to reform the EU Treaties. At the Granada summit in early October, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also called for EU enlargement not to wait for treaty change.
Citizens also put forward recommendations and proposals for the future of the Union at the Conference on the Future of Europe, a series of debates taking place between 2021 and 2022.
In concrete terms, what reform proposals have been put forward? How will they be adopted? Here are seven key areas of reform.
- First, decision-making and enlargement. First of all, MEPs are calling for changes to the voting mechanisms within the Council. To prevent institutional stagnation, they favour extending qualified majority voting to all areas where unanimity is still required. Currently, a qualified majority is achieved when at least 55% of member states (i.e. 15 out of 27) vote in favour and when those member states represent at least 65% of the EU population. In some policy areas it is necessary to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting: tax policy, social policy. To prepare the EU institutions for enlargement, the G12, a Franco-German working group on institutional reforms, favours abolishing the veto in foreign affairs, maintaining the maximum number of 751 members of the European Parliament and extending the EU’s term of office.
- Second, peace and security, mainly linked to the war in Ukraine, which has also highlighted “the scope and limits of the European Union’s power,” according to the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in its report. EU member states have imposed a series of sanctions against Russia and provided economic, military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, the war has demonstrated their failure to anticipate the crisis, their dependence on the United States for their own defence and their reliance on Russian gas imports. As a consequence, members of the European Parliament are proposing the creation of a defence union with military capabilities.
- Consolidating the rule of law is one of the EU’s weaknesses, leading the authors of the report “Navigating the High Seas: EU Reform and Enlargement in the 21st Century” to recommend increasing budgetary conditions and improving Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which authorises a member state to have a say in the Council will be dissolved if it does not respect fundamental values such as democracy, the rule of law and human rights. The European Commission first invoked Article 7 in 2017 against Poland when Warsaw planned a reform that jeopardised the independence of the judiciary.
- The Treaty on the Functioning of the EU already mentions environmental protection. In addition, MEPs have called for the inclusion of reducing global warming and preserving biodiversity among the Union’s objectives. The Foundation for European Progressive Studies also proposes the introduction of a new exclusive EU competence for international climate change policy, which would allow the European Union to unanimously discuss environmental rules.
- Further, soaring energy prices also following the war in Ukraine have emphasised the dependence of some European countries on Russian gas. Therefore, Members of the European Parliament propose the creation of an integrated European Energy Union to guarantee a stable, affordable and sustainable energy supply for Europeans. This strategy is based on five pillars: energy security, an integrated internal energy market, energy efficiency, decarbonisation of the economy, and research and the economy.
- The term “digital” is not mentioned in the Lisbon Treaty, but experts are now insisting that the text needs to be updated. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protects users’ personal data. According to the authors of the report “The EU Treaties: Why they need targeted changes”, digital issues should be a shared competence between the EU and member states, in order to guarantee access to the Internet, the right to disconnect, digital education, the right to live without the need for digital technologies and the right to a safe environment.
- Finally, one of the most sought-after points is the health and the health crisis, which is by definition transnational, which does not stop at borders, requires joint action. A European Health Data Area, fair access to healthcare within the EU, joint purchasing of vaccines and medicines, treatment of rare diseases and development of orphan drugs are just some of the public goods that can be developed. According to the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, these are all public goods that could be developed on a European scale if EU competences were extended.
In summary, whether or not the EU succeeds in finding a way forward in treaty reform, one prospect seems clear enough: since the era of crises will certainly continue, the EU will experience important additional changes in policies and structures brought about by improvisation under the pressure of acute emergencies. In fact, the very future of the Union will depend on whether it manages to maintain and increase its ability to respond creatively to new challenges, especially challenges that were not foreseen by the authors of its founding documents.
