Some News on the Lisbon Treaty

After a rather long "creative pause" I am now - hopefully - back on track. A lot has happened in the international law arena during the past few months and to list everything here would probably go beyond the scope of a simple blog post. So I decided to focus on one area that has previously been of intensive coverage on this blog: the good old(?) Lisbon Treaty.

Having been signed in December 2007, the Lisbon Treaty is currently in its ratification phase, i.e. the treaty has to become binding in the individual Member States. The ratification procedures vary among the various Member States and the whole process will probably last through 2008. For those of you who would like to know the Treaty's ratification status in the individual states, the European Union has a very helpful web page explaining ratification procedures, ratification status and other interesting information on a country-by-country basis. Here is the link (I will also add this link to the sidebar of my blog). In June, Ireland will hold its long-anticipated referendum on the Lisbon Treaty ratification and in the United Kingdom a case is pending on the question whether there should be a referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. So it is definitely worth keeping an eye on how the situation in those two countries develops.

The above-mentioned web page also offers other interesting information on the Lisbon Treaty, including a full-text version [link]. In addition, the Centrum fuer Europaeische Politik (CEP) [homepage] provides an interesting comparison of the Lisbon Treaty and its predecessor, the Nice Treaty [link; contributions mainly in German, but "Overview: Institutional Changes" is available in English at the bottom of the web page].

Well, this post should definitely bring us back on track as far as the Lisbon Treaty is concerned ...