EU 리스본체제의 법적 구조에 대한 분석과 평가

Review on the Legal Structure of the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon

This is to deal with the legal structure of the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon What is the legal status of the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon? What is the difference between the legal structure of the European Community in the Treaty of Nice and that of the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon? Basically the legal status of the European Union remains unchanged after the Treaty of Lisbon came into force, though the European Union has had legal personality and replaced and succeeded the European Community. The European Union is still said to be a supranational organization, which has some features of a federation. On the contrary, much more evidently and affirmed is the fact that the European Union is a international organization, but not a state, because the Treaty of Lisbon was drafted according to the European Council’s mandate for the 2007 Intergovernmental Conference declared that the constitutional concept was abandoned. Nevertheless the Treaty of Lisbon could be said to extend and reinforce the integration of Europe. The Treaty of Lisbon might be also characterized to increase and strengthen representative democracy and the democratic legitimacy of decision-making procedures in the European Union. Since the members of the European Parliament were elected by direct suffrage in 1979, the powers of the European Parliament have been enlarged and strengthen on the basis of democratic legitimacy and now acquired the same status and powers as the Council has in law-making procedures or budget matters. But the European Parliament is not responsible for what the European Parliament has done. The result of the election for the European Parliament has a tendency to depend on the domestic affairs of a member state. In other words, voters tend to use this election to express whether they approve what their national government is doing, but not what the European Parliament is doing. As a result, the European Parliament fails to provide a mechanism for popular opinion to influence the policy of the European Union. I wonder if it’s feasible to apply in the European Union the same level of representative democracy as in a national state and how far it is applied in the European Union.