After all, even had Lisbon been ratified, the Union would have remained a fragmented political actor, incapable of decisive action in times of international crisis or of wielding significant military force.
Following the talks in Lisbon, Chris Patten. the European Union Commissioner for External Relations, told the BBC that the EU delegation had asked Mr Ivanov to allow the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to set up an office in the North Caucasus.
The mood of paralysis seemed to be captured at the European Union's summit in Lisbon last week, after which France was cast as Europe's laggard: too stubborn to abandon its old statist ways, too reluctant to pursue market reform, too proud to admit the merits of American liberal economics.
The House of Lords European Union Committee published a report on 11 April 2011 that found that with the increasing size of the EU's membership, coupled with the expansion of the Court of Justice of the European Union's jurisdiction since the Lisbon Treaty, the institution was struggling to manage its workload.
If you had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and let's say the country voted against the Lisbon Treaty, what would change in the European Union the morning after that referendum vote?
Neither seems ready to talk about the sort of labour and capital market deregulation which proved so successful in Britain, for example, and which the European Union has committed itself to as part of the Lisbon process, aimed at making Europe the world's most competitive region by 2010.
Lisbon's demise will have relatively little direct impact on the Union's ability to play a role on the world stage.
One of his first moves in office was to persuade his European Union peers to remove a clause from the now-frozen Lisbon treaty stating that competition was a key EU objective.
The State of the Union addressed comes as the European Parliament has increased powers since the passing of the Lisbon Treaty.
应用推荐