Winners and Losers of Lisbon and Further Possibilities of European Integration

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe, printed single-sided, grade: 73% (1st class), University of Sussex, course: Law and Policy of the European Union, language: English, abstract: The Lisbon Treaty, which came into force on the 1st December of 2009, is a major revision of the former treaties concerning the European Union. It changed a lot of the structures of the Union to which many citizens have grown used to. For example, the "pillar-structure" of the EU, which was implemented by the Maastricht Treaty, is gone. It is a big step towards a more (political) integrated and an "ever closer Union". In the first part of this essay the changes the Lisbon Treaty introduced to the political institutions will be discussed. The second part will show how integration might look like post-Lisbon and whether there will be further integration in form of further revisions of the treaty.