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On February 18, GMF and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung Für Die Freiheit hosted a panel discussion entitled "The First 80 Days: Is the Lisbon Treaty Working for Europe? And for the U.S.?" which analyzed the effect of the Lisbon Treaty on the EU and transatlantic relations.  The panelists included the Honorable Werner Hoyer, Deputy Foreign Minister at the German Foreign Office and Dr. Charles A. Kupchan, senior fellow for Europe studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  Karen Donfried, GMF Executive Vice President and Claus Gramckow, Acting Representative of the Transatlantic Dialogue Program at Friedrich Naumann Stiftung welcomed participants and introduced the speakers. Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, GMF Senior Director for Policy Programs, moderated the discussion. 

Dr. Hoyer, taking the practitioner's view of the Lisbon Treaty, argued that it is premature to analyze its effects after only 80 days.  After working in the German Foreign Office in 1994 and seeing the effort toward EU institutional reform, Dr. Hoyer believes that the best feature of the Lisbon Treaty is the institutional basis for the future.  The two main changes to the European Union are democratic reforms and creating a more efficient EU by strengthening institutions such as the European Council and the European Parliament in an attempt to create more internal and external coordination.  Because the European Parliament operates differently than do most EU national parliaments (i.e. the European Parliament is not elected and therefore has different rights and responsibilities than national parliaments), it will take time to adjust to the new rights and responsibilities committed to the European Parliament.  The EU, especially the Council of the European Union is becoming more efficient through the use of more qualified majority voting. This is becoming the norm, which allows member states in the opposition to build alliances and create consensus based decisions.  The reduced role of the rotating presidency will enable the EU to refocus on the "Europe" sphere and signifies an attitude shift. 

Dr. Hoyer noted his support for the newly appointed President of the Council of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Lady Ashton.  Herman Van Rompuy will "brand" the role of the president and set the standard for his predecessors.  Although, Belgium is a small country, the political situation is fractious and it takes a strong leader to hold the country together.  Dr. Hoyer's remarks for Lady Ashton were that even though she has limited foreign policy experience, her substantial experience working on trade while part of the European Commission is important.  Her position is likely to be more of a struggle between the three pillars of the European Union.  Her position also conveys an important message to the United States, which is that better coordination of foreign policy could lead to better EU cooperation with the American government.

Dr. Kupchan agreed with most of Dr. Hoyer's analysis of the Lisbon Treaty-especially that it is too premature to draw significant conclusions about the recent changes.  Dr. Kupchan wondered whether the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty might one day be compared to the United States in the 1890s when it went through a period of transformation that created sufficiently coherent institutions and a serious geopolitical profile.  Because it is difficult at this early stage to draw any conclusions on the Lisbon Treaty, Dr. Kupchan posited that there are two potential outcomes.  The first, which is more optimistic, is that the institutional changes will give the EU the power to do things it could not previously, even if the changes are incremental.  The less optimistic outcome is that the Lisbon Treaty will be a force of aggregation, but will also enable forces of renationalization to grow in member states. Becoming more democratic is a good thing for the EU, but it may also hinder integration.  Previous efforts at integration were an elite-driven enterprise and now more domestic actors will be involved-possibly hindering EU integration.  The last consequence of the Lisbon Treaty is that Europe now has to deal with geopolitics and foreign policies that it simply may not be ready to deal with at this point in its development.

Dr. Kupchan continued by listing two recommendations for what the EU should do to move forward. First, the EU needs to find meaningful duties for Lady Ashton, such as working on complex foreign policy issues like Russia, the Balkans, or coordination with the United States.  By allowing her to work on these issues, she can take deliverables to the European public and show some accountability for the EU's foreign policy.  Second, the EU can move away from the lowest common denominator approach of foreign policy (i.e. unanimous decisions) and transition to a policy of "coalitions of the willing", letting each member state pick and choose which foreign policy issues to participate in.  This will enable a more efficient foreign policy to develop. 

The discussion was then opened for questions, which ranged from how to deal with "spoiler" countries that may seek to obstruct further integration to what role the Lisbon Treaty might play in restructuring global governance institutions. One particularly interesting set of questions focused on how the Lisbon Treaty will affect the significance of the EU in U.S. foreign policy decisions. Ultimately, Dr. Hoyer noted that cooperation between the EU and United States is already quite good, while Dr. Kupchan noted that the Obama administration marks the beginning of a new American foreign policy in which the EU must not remain silent if it wants to be significant.