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The Twenty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 2008 was a bill introduced by the Government of Ireland in 2008 to amend the Constitution of Ireland in order to enable ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon (also known as the Reform Treaty) of the European Union, so it could be enacted as scheduled on 1 January 2009. As part of the enactment of the bill, a referendum was held on 12 June 2008.[1] The proposal was defeated by 53.4% of votes to 46.6%, with a turn out of 53.1%.[2]

The German parliament is due to ratify the treaty in May and is likely to approve it, however the final act of ratification requires the country's president, Horst Kohler, to sign off the document. Mr Kohler may decide to wait for the court to reach a decision before putting his stamp under the treaty.

The Irish vote Meanwhile, another country in the ratification process that is set to provide for plenty of discussion is Ireland, the only member state to have a referendum.

Germany's constitutional court is preparing for an unusually long hearing on the EU's Lisbon treaty in a process that will help determine the fate of the document across the European Union. Over two days next month (10-11 February) the court's judges will discuss whether the treaty breaches Germany's constitution.

The court is considering a complaint brought by conservative MP Peter Gauweiler, who has argued that the treaty infringes on the rights given to German citizens in their country's constitution by allowing a foreign court - the European Court of Justice - to decide upon such issues. He also argues that the treaty undermines the power of Germany's own parliament, the Bundestag.

The Czech Republic, Poland and Ireland also have yet to complete ratification. The Czech parliament is due to debate the charter at the beginning of February. If it passes parliament, it then faces another hurdle in the shape of the country's eurosceptic president, Vaclav Klaus, who must also give his approval. Ireland is having another go at ratifying the treaty after it was rejected by Irish citizens last June. The second referendum will take place in the autumn. The result will directly influence Poland's treaty situation. Polish President Lech Kaczynski has said he will only give the nod to the treaty if Ireland's referendum produces a Yes vote.

The Czech EU presidency is to begin the complicated task of providing the legal guarantees for the political concessions that Ireland has received on the rejected Lisbon Treaty. Work will soon begin between Irish lawyers, the legal services of the Council (representing member states) and the European Commission, to firm up EU promises to that the treaty will not affect Irish neutrality, abortion or tax laws.

Mr Martin admitted that running a second referendum will be "very challenging" but noted that the worsening economic situation in Ireland due to the global financial crisis may make voters "accept that it is far better for Ireland to be at the heart of the European Union ... rather than to marginalise itself."

An Irish parliamentary committee is to debate a report arguing that a second referendum on the EU's Lisbon treaty is legally possible. The draft report, first seen by the Irish Times, has been discussed in a private session by the Subcommittee on Ireland's Future in the EU and is due to be presented to the joint Committee on European Affairs on Thursday (27 November).

It argues that a second poll on the EU's new reform treaty - following the debacle in June when the Irish voters rejected the document by a clear majority - would be preferable, suggesting a vote on the same text but accompanied by clarifying declarations on controversial issues.

Meanwhile, Prague is expecting a verdict from the Czech constitutional court on whether the EU reform plan is in line with the Czech constitution after a heated exchange between the country's president and government officials in the courtroom on Tuesday (25 November). The Czech Republic is the only country that has not yet voted on the Lisbon treaty. Despite this fact, the republic is preparing to take over the helm of the EU from France in January, when it assumes the six-month rotating EU presidency, and must then lead talks with Ireland on how to solve the institutional problem.

Ireland is keeping a watchful eye on any possible changes to the European Constitution calling on member states to maintain the "balance of the entire package", the country's minister for European affairs said in an interview with EUobserver. "We are very concerned that the balance will be maintained within the whole package," Noel Treacy said, adding that his colleagues in charge of justice and foreign affairs are following the negotiations closely.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said the Czech parliament should ratify any fresh legal clauses attached to the Lisbon treaty to help Ireland clinch a Yes vote in its second referendum. EU leaders meeting in Brussels on 18-19 June are set to agree on legal guarantees for Ireland in the areas of taxation, neutrality and social affairs.

The extra bells and whistles are designed to help Ireland hold a second referendum on the text in autumn, after an initial No vote last summer. But it is not yet clear how the guarantees will be enshrined in EU law. The eurosceptic Czech president – a staunch opponent of the treaty – has said that the guarantees would constitute a mini-treaty in themselves. Under Czech law, any fresh international treaty must be ratified by parliament and signed by the president. "Any conclusion in another form would contradict Article 49 of the [Czech] constitution and I could not accept such a proceeding," Mr Klaus wrote to Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer in a letter released on Wednesday (17 June). Mr Fischer rejected the request, saying a government agreement would be enough. "[The guarantees] are not an international treaty of a political nature ...but an international treaty of a governmental type which does not require the powers of the head of state to be concluded," he wrote on the government website.

The Czech government has advised the country's Constitutional Court that the EU's Lisbon treaty does not violate the Czech Republic's own constitution, improving the climate for ratification in the most problematic EU state after the Irish No vote.

Analysts expect the EU treaty to get through the 200-seat lower house. But the eurosceptic ODS party, many of whose members say Lisbon is dead after the Irish referendum, holds a 41-strong majority in the 81-seat upper house. The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus - an outspoken enemy of Lisbon - must also sign the text to make it law. The largely honorary office of the Czech president would find it hard to block a parliamentary decision in practice, however.

Ratification map France, Germany and the European Commission have called for ratification to continue despite the Irish No, pointing to a scenario in which Ireland stands isolated against 26 EU states and faces pressure for a re-vote, as occured with the 2001 Nice treaty referendum. Sixteen EU states have so far definitively ratified Lisbon. The Finnish, Polish and German parliaments have approved the text, but are awaiting their presidents' signatures. The Swedish, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Spanish, and Cypriot legislatures will finish voting between July and the autumn. The Czech Republic is not the only problem country left, with the Polish president's office questioning whether the treaty still legally exists and the German constitutional court considering a legal challenge. Austrian leader Alfred Gusenbauer last week said he would also call a referendum if Lisbon is tweaked for a second Irish vote.

Legal guarantees promised to Ireland and paving the way for a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the country are to be written into a protocol together with Croatia's accession treaty to the EU in 2010 or 2011, current EU President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday (12 December).

EU leaders in Brussels this week (11-12 December) agreed to a series of concessions to allow Dublin to make possible a second vote on the bloc's Lisbon Treaty some time in the course of next year.

In order to make these promises legally binding, they will be written into a protocol in Croatia's accession treaty - that has to be ratified by all EU countries to enter into force. "To give a legal value to the engagements made to Ireland by the 26 other member states, we have committed that at the time of the next EU enlargement – whether that will be in 2010 or in 2011, when probably Croatia will join us ... we will use that to add a protocol [on Ireland] to Croatia's accession treaty," Mr Sarkozy told journalists after the EU summit.

A total of 53.4% of Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty, with just 46.6% voting in its favour. Turnout was not as low as initially predicted with 53.1% of the electorate turning up at the urns.  With a total of 862,415 votes against, the Lisbon Treaty, which would have affected all the EU's 495 million citizens, was effectively rejected by 0.175% of the bloc's population, throwing the EU into an existential crisis. 

The EU summit, which starts in Brussels today (19 June), was meant to give EU leaders the opportunity to discuss their first full-time president. But following the 'no' vote in Ireland, they now face the less pleasant prospect of having to reduce the size of the European Commission as currently required by the Nice Treaty.

Background: The Nice Treaty stipulates that when the number of EU member states reaches 27, the number of commissioners appointed in the subsequent EU executive would have to be less than this number, without giving a precise figure.  With the EU now having numbered 27 members since 1 January 2007, there is an understanding that the current number of commissioners exceeds the realistic number of portfolios.  As an example, to accommodate Bulgaria and Romania, Markos Kyprianou, the Cypriot health and consumer protection commissioner, had to abandon the second part of his portfolio in favour of his new Bulgarian colleague, Meglena Kuneva (EurActiv 26/10/06) Similarly, the multilingualism portfolio was taken from Ján Figel, the Slovak commissioner for education, training and culture, and handed to Leonard Orban, the Romanian commissioner (EurActiv 31/10/06).

But following the failed Irish referendum, heads of state and government will instead have to revert to the provisions of the Nice Treaty, which is designed for a Europe of 27 member states, diplomats said.  In short, this means having to consider reducing the number of commissioners to below 27, as foreseen under the current treaty agreed upon in Nice in 2001. In contrast, the Lisbon Treaty envisages reducing the number of commissioners to 15 by 2014. 

The leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament, Martin Schultz, has accused Irish EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy of "arrogance" for his public revelations that he had not read the Lisbon Treaty and for a visit to the US just ahead of the referendum in Ireland.

We have to ask Mr Barroso what kind of people he has in his commission, particularly if you have someone acting as the deregulation Pope in Europe who then goes home and says he hasn't read the treaty and doesn't understand it," Mr Schultz told reporters on Tuesday (17 June). He was reacting to several statements of Mr McCreevy, who is in charge of internal market in the 27-member-strong European Commission, ahead of the only popular vote on the new EU reform treaty in Ireland held last week, in which the Irish rejected the document. The commissioner admitted a lack of knowledge of details of the treaty in an interview with the EUobserver, saying he had only read most of a summary of the document.

Moreover, the German Socialist leader criticised the EU executive for tabling proposals on rising oil prices the day after - rather than before - the referendum in Ireland, saying he was "amazed" that it had happened.

Ireland is busy working on legal wording to make the Lisbon Treaty more palatable to Irish voters, but its EU partners have raised concerns about the scope of the texts and some impatience at the pace of the work. Last week, officials from Dublin met representatives from the 26 other member states to shed some light on what kind of wording Ireland is looking for in order to ensure the greatest chance that its citizens will vote "Yes" the second referendum on the treaty, scheduled for autumn.

But the reason for the wariness among other capitals is that these texts will take the form of legally-binding protocols, which will be attached to the first legal vehicle available to get them ratified. At the moment, the talk is of Croatia's accession treaty, which will have to pass through all 27 parliaments of the EU. "We want to make sure it is very specific to Ireland, so we do not get asked why we haven't got guarantees on certain issues," said one diplomat.

The Swedish parliament late on Thursday (20 November) adopted the Lisbon treaty by a sweeping majority, becoming the 23rd EU country to ratify the text. The treaty was passed by 243 votes against 39 at 23:30 local time, with 13 abstentions and 54 deputies absent from the 349-seat legislature, the Riksdag.

Final four The Swedish result comes after Ireland voted No to Lisbon in a referendum in June. A small crowd of anti-Lisbon campaigners protested outside the Swedish embassy in Dublin on Thursday, saying the Irish government should have told Sweden the treaty is dead. The Czech Republic is awaiting a constitutional court verdict on 25 November before resuming parliamentary ratification. A German constitutional court verdict is expected in early 2009. The Polish president has refused to sign off on the treaty unless Ireland overturns its No.

Germany's highest court will today (10 February) begin a hearing on whether the EU's Lisbon treaty undermines the country's own constitution by weakening the power of the national parliament. The hearing is to last two days, an exceptionally long time, seen as an indication of how seriously the court is taking the challenge.

The judges will look at whether the Lisbon Treaty - designed to improve decision-making in the EU - is not democratic, and therefore anti-constitutional, because it takes away power from Germany's parliament.

So far, the treaty has been through most of the process - it has been approved by both houses of parliament and signed by Germany's president. But the final step of ratification, handing the papers over in Rome, has been postponed pending the court decision. The judgement is expected to be made in two to three months. But even if the court comes out in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, the process may not be over. Last month, a separate group handed in another complaint on the treaty, listing political and economic faults. The court has yet to decide whether to take on the case. Elsewhere, the fate of the treaty remains uncertain too. The Czech Republic has yet to begin ratification of the treaty, while Ireland is facing a second referendum on the document after its citizens rejected it last June. Poland's President, meanwhile, has said he will not sign the treaty until it has been accepted in Ireland.

A pro-EU constitution gathering in Madrid has called for a revised version of the charter to not go "below" the existing compromise, while expressing "frustration" at the lack of alternative solutions put forward by countries that have failed to ratify it. The EU constitution as it stands is "the result of complex and difficult negotiations" which reflects "delicate balances bringing together diverse political, social, economic and legal interests," stated delegates from the 18 countries that have already ratified the charter plus Ireland and Portugal on Friday (26 January).

In a speech to open the 'Friends of EU constitution' meeting in Madrid, Spain's foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos argued that any revised treaty should be extended to include more European objectives rather than pared down to just institutional reforms. Delegates from the 18 countries that have ratified the EU constitution plus its strong supporters - Ireland and Portugal - have gathered in a cultural centre - usually used for hosting events related to Latin America - to outline their positions on the future of the European treaty.

The bulk of the six proceedings challenging the compatibility of Lisbon Treaty and the German Constitution initiated by the conservative MP Peter Gauweiler and a number of left-wing deputies from Die Linke, revolves around the question of whether the Lisbon Treaty erodes the German parliament's powers of participation in EU decision making.

National parliaments and the Lisbon Treaty Under the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments are involved in the EU's policy formulation process by safeguarding the subsidiarity principle. It is essentially a consultation mechanism operating before the onset of the EU decision-making procedure and is applicable only where competences are shared between the EU and the Member States.

Three final remarks suffice. First, both chambers of the German parliament have approved the Lisbon Treaty and have therefore made use of what the Federal Constitutional Court has deemed in its Maastricht judgment a key means of ensuring a democratic character of the Union and of Germany's membership in it. Second, much of the academic literature, as well as an empirical inquiry recently conducted at Utrecht University, have shown that the Bundestag, unlike the Bundesrat, is quite passive in using the available tools of influencing Union's policies and laws. Third, the outcome of the pending Lisbon Treaty cases is of prime importance not only for Germany but for the whole of the EU and its relevance transcends the remaining ratification procedures in Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic. This is not least because the "sale of the state's vital powers" is at stake, as Prof. Klaus Buchner one of the complainants said. It has all the ingredients to become the most influential pronouncement that the German Federal Constitutional Court has ever made regarding the EU.