Rejecting the EU Constitution? From the constitutional treaty to the Treaty of Lisbon

Follows the EU constitutional reform process from its controversial early incarnation, the EU Constitutional Reform Treaty, to its current, less controversial version, the Lisbon Treaty. It focuses on the three no-votes (Dutch, French, and Irish) to the original and the current treaty, and the different reasoning behind each. Assembling the opinions of policymakers, academics, and journalists, the work presents the debate between the crisis callers those who see the EU constitutional reform process as a sign of political crisis within the EU that might, in some cases, result in positively increasing the legitimacy of the EU and the normalizers those who see it as no different from the previous EU reform processes. Through this debate, the work emphasizes why the EU Constitutional Treaty is particularly important and assesses the extent to which it is likely to significantly change both the functioning and, perhaps more importantly, the outlook of the EU.