January 25, 2010

Former Le Monde Editor: Lisbon Treaty has made EU more complex rather than more simple

 

In an article in El País  on 6 January Jean-Marie Colombani, former Editor of Le Monde, criticised the Lisbon Treaty for making the EU more complex, regarding the combination of the full-time EU President and rotating EU Presidency for member states. He writes, "What a strange thing, this two-headed presidency!" He continues, "Put ourselves in the place of European citizens, who were sold the idea that the Lisbon Treaty would simplify things... The idea was that this simplification would make Europe more dynamic and more efficient. And yet, in this New Year, one feels a rush of vertigo: nobody had really realised that the rotating presidency would continue...Now we realise that Europe will be run by a complex mechanism with at least four axes: the president and the European foreign minister; the country holding the rotating presidency; the president of the Commission and his team and finally the national heads of state and government."

The Economist´s Charlemagne blog argued at the same time that the potential for this problem has been obvious since the Lisbon Treaty negotiations started, and writes: "Did none of them read the Lisbon Treaty?" It adds, "This would be the same Jean-Marie Colombani who edited Le Monde until 2007, and whose newspaper was among the loudest cheerleaders for the ill-fated EU Constitutional Treaty and then its near-identical replacement, the Lisbon Treaty."

 

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