Decision-Making before and after Lisbon: The Impact of Changes in Decision-Making Rules

This paper examines the institutional rules and the decision-making process in the European Union before and after the Lisbon Treaty. What challenges did the EU respond to that ultimately led to the Lisbon Treaty? What institutional changes were made? What has been the outcome of these changes? If we look at these results through various European integration theory lenses, what can we learn? To address these questions the paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces the issues. The second examines the challenges to which Lisbon was supposed to be the answer. Section three examines the institutional and decision-making changes that were made by means of the Lisbon Treaty. Section four offers an assessment as to what effects the Lisbon changes have had to date. The fifth offers an analysis that draws on European integration theories to make sense of the findings. The final section concludes.