What Lisbon contains

The small print of a notably complicated document

Eurocrats like to talk about building Europe “step by step”. Critics accuse Brussels of slicing away national sovereignty, treaty by treaty. Both versions are correct. Treaties are try-ons whose true effects become clear only years later.

Fans of the Lisbon treaty say it is designed to make EU institutions more efficient and to “streamline” decision-making after the union's enlargement to 27 nations. What does that mean in practice?

The EU's voting system will become simpler and more reflective of a nation's population size. The changes will be phased in between 2014 and 2017. After that, a majority vote in the Council of Ministers (which represents national governments) will be carried if 55% of nations representing 65% of the overall EU population say yes. In practice, though, the EU rarely votes, preferring consensus.

More important, majority voting will become the rule in some 50 policy areas currently decided by unanimity: most dramatically migration, criminal justice and judicial and police co-operation, where the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will also gain broad oversight for the first time. In return for giving up national vetoes, Britain and Ireland have obtained the right to stand aloof from individual measures, but in practice may opt in quite often.

The treaty creates a full-time standing president of the European Council (which represents national leaders). This figure, probably an ex-prime minister or similar bigwig, will be elected by serving heads of government for a two-and-a-half-year stint, renewable once, and will prepare and host four or more summits a year.

A new foreign minister in all but name will be created by merging two existing posts. Working for both governments and the European Commission, he will have political clout, money and his own diplomatic service. He will speak for the EU in places like the United Nations, whenever governments have agreed on a foreign policy position. Under the treaty, the keenest member states may also push ahead with defence co-operation among themselves.

The treaty gives legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, a sweeping catalogue of social and civil rights. It is hard to predict how much it will matter. It talks of things such as a right to strike, or a “right of access to preventive health care”, that are not in the EU's gift: the Union has few direct powers to regulate industrial disputes or national health services. Everyone expects the ECJ to have the final say—even in Britain, which hopes a special protocol will make British laws immune from challenges based on the charter.

The European Commission's top layer of political leaders will shrink. After 2014, EU nations will lose the right to send one commissioner each to Brussels. Instead, the total number of commissioners will be capped at a rotating two-thirds of the number of member states. This may weaken the commission if big countries sulk about not having their own man inside.

National parliaments will be allowed to protest if they consider a proposed EU law unnecessary. The bar is set high: if half the 27 national parliaments are unhappy, then a majority of national governments (or a majority of members of the European Parliament) can insist a draft measure be scrapped. This new clause may hearten domestic opponents of moves dictated from Brussels. Or it may not.