Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

the Lisbon Treaty of December 2007. Like the constitution it replaced, the Lisbon Treaty merged the multiple pillars of the European integration project into a single European Union with a population of 500 million. It created a new foreign and security policy for the EU. It streamlined the commission and established the principle of majority voting that was essential to make the vastly expanded structure manageable. But above all, it institutionalized the council as the representation of Europe’s national governments and created a presidency of the council as its standing representative. It ended any pretension on the part of the European Commission and its president to executive leadership.57 Many of the key provisions of the original constitutional treaty were thus maintained. But the defeat of 2005 left a lasting mark. The paramountcy of Europe’s national governments was reaffirmed. For the foreseeable future there would be no further steps toward federal integration. Policy in Europe would be made not centrally by Brussels but by intergovernmental bargain.