April 2010 - Ratification of the Lisbon Treaty

On November 3 2009 the Czech President signed the Treaty of Lisbon which marked the end of the ratification process. The treaty entered into force on 1 December 2009. The Treaty introduces many changes and reforms to EU law which has affected some of the terminology used in the textbook. These include:

• the replacement of the term ‘Community’ with ‘Union’ – it is no longer accurate to speak of ‘EC law’ except in a historical sense

• the renumbering of many of the previous treaty articles

• the appointment of a permanent president of the council

• the creation of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

For an analysis of the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on environmental law please see the article by Hans Vedder in the Journal of Environmental Law, ‘The Treaty of Lisbon and European Environmental Law and Policy’, which was published on 24 Feb 2010. The article can be found at the link below although you may require your university log-in details to access it: http://jel.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/eqq001

Additionally, see Lee, M., ‘The  Environmental Implications of the Lisbon Treaty’, Environmental Law Review 10 no2 (2008)
For a full analysis of the general legal changes made by the Treaty of Lisbon see the following update written by Stephen Weatherill:
www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199214013/01student/updates/weatherill_may08_lisbon.pdf

For those interested in an overview of the ratification process, please see the following page from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8337791.stm

For more information on the treaty and access to the full text of the treaty itself, please see the relevant pages of the Europa website:
http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/index_en.htm

For recent EU Law textbooks published by OUP, please see:
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/category/academic/highereducation/law/eu.do