History. The Lisbon Treaty was rejected in a referendum in Ireland on 12 June 2008 by a 53.4% No votes

The Lisbon Treaty was rejected in a referendum in Ireland on 12 June 2008 by a 53.4% No votes.

Many Czechs feared that the Lisbon Treaty could be used by some Germans to lay claim to property which they or their relations had lost when they were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War 2.

The British Conservatives wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the UK. This had been promised to British voters before the last UK general election by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The next British general election must be held by June 2010.

After the Lisbon Treaty is ratified by the 27 member states, there is no scope for further referendums on it. Any renegotiation of the Lisbon Treaty requires unanimity amongst all 27 member states.

The Lisbon Treaty includes all operational articles from the rejected EU Constitution, but it alters their presentation radically. Instead of one comprehensive document that would replace all the existing European Treaties, the Lisbon Treaty amends the existing 17 basic EU treaties and many accompanying protocols and declarations.

It thereby gives the EU a constitution indirectly rather than directly. The EU's constitutional law will thus continue to consist of a plethora of treaties amending the founding treaties.

By amending the existing Treaties the Lisbon Treaty gives the EU a Constitution of more than 3000 pages compared to the 560 pages in the formally titled "Constitution for Europe" of 2004, which the French and Dutch rejected in 2005.

Although it changes the name from "EU Constitution" to "Lisbon Treaty" - strictly speaking the Consolidated European Treaties as Amended by Lisbon - it does not alter the jurispridence of the European Court, which has already characterised the treaties as "the Constitutional Charter of a Community of Law, a new legal order for the sake of which the States have limited their sovereign rights" (Opinion 1/91).

The Lisbon Treaty deletes the constitution's article on the European symbols, such as the flag, Europe Day, the motto and the common EU anthem, which had been in the original "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe".

However, it was also stated that this deletion does not change the status of any of the European symbols, which have been in existence for years anyway without any formal basis in the European Treaties.

The Lisbon Treaty moves Article I-6 of the Constitution referring to the primacy of Community law to Declaration No 17 attached to Lisbon. This Declaration recalls the existing case law of the European Court, which states, for example, that EU law cannot "be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed".

The Lisbon Treaty contains the same number of new policy areas that are made subject to voting by qualified majority. They number 68 in all.

The revised constitution now embodied in the Lisbon Treaty abolishes the existing "three-pillar" structure of the European Treaties - the area of the European Community, in which supranational Community law prevails, and the two areas of foreign and security policy on the one hand and crime, justice and home affairs policy on the other, where member states cooperated on the basis of retained sovereignty.

The Lisbon Treaty abolishes the European Community and transfers all of its powers and institutions to the constitutionally new post-Lisbon European Union. To enable this to be done it gives legal personality to the European Union in Article 47 TEU. This makes it possible for the Union to legislate internally as the European Community had previously done and for the entire Union to act on the international scene as a constitutionally integrated entity.

It also establishes a common permanent President of the European Council and an EU Foreign Minister who will now be titled "The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy". This High Representative - formerly a post held by Javier Solana, now by Lady Ashton - is also a Vice-President of the European Commission.

The term European Community disappeared from all treaty texts and is replaced by the term "Union". The Community itself legally disappeared.

The Treaty confers on the citizens of the 27 member states an "additional" citizenship of the Union on top of their national citizenship. This is similar to the internal dual citizenships possessed by citizens of such classical federations as the USA and Federal Germany.

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is made legally binding, allowing the EU Court to further develop the legal principles and fundamental rights of the Union and its citizens. See Art. 6 TEU.