Winners and Losers of Lisbon and Further Possibilities of European Integration

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Region: Western Europe, 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.