Monday, June 23, 2008

Swedish legal opinion: Lisbon Treaty same as Constitution

The Swedish Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) – the Swedish expert body on constitutional matters - was commissioned by the Swedish government to give its opinion on the most appropriate way to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. It has concluded that the Lisbon treaty can be ratified in Sweden without special ratification procedures (i.e. referendum).

The reason: they say the Lisbon Treaty is “essentially equivalent to the Constitution”.

In fact, to save effort and avoid repetition the Council just quotes the opinion it gave on the EU Constitution back in 2005.

Ha!

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous24/6/08 2:08 pm

    If the treaty of Lisbon is the same as the Constitutional treaty I want the latter again.

    The latter makes a working common foreign policy possible (majority decisions), the former not (unchanged unanimity).

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  2. Open Europe blog team24/6/08 2:11 pm

    Other than the non binding declaration, what are you saying has moved back from QMV to unanimity?

    Can't think of anything here.

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  3. Ralf Grahn 25/6/08 5:51 pm

    Actually, Masse's report is somewhat misleading.

    The Council on Legislation said that the Swedish Constitution was no obstacle. (A referendum would be a political decision.)

    The Lisbon Treaty did not alter the opinion reached on the Constitutional Treaty. From this viewpoint they were similar 'in principle'.

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