Excerpt More information
Date Issued
2014
Author(s)
Abstract
In paving the way for the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the second Irish referendum of October 2009 brought to an end a constitutional saga that had occupied EU elites for the best part of a decade. The institutional crisis had been provoked by the two negative popular votes in France and the Netherlands on a major treaty reform, the Constitutional Treaty. The crisis was exacerbated when the Irish electorate delivered a “no” vote in 2008 on the carefully repackaged version of the failed Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty. The respite from the European Union (EU) constitutional odyssey was short-lived, however. Within months of the entry into force of the new constitutional settlement the EU was plunged into a financial crisis that threatened the future of its flagship policy, the single currency. The new Lisbon institutional machinery had been operative for barely a few months when the financial crisis exposed the serious inadequacies of its institutional arrangements for economic governance. The ensuing euro clash exposed a new cleavage between creditor and debtor euro partners as well the potential for a growing divergence between euro members and non-euro member states. Greece was to be the first, and most dramatic, case in a series of emergency “bail-outs” for euro member states afflicted by the financial crisis. During the critical negotiations for its second emergency “bail-out”–one of the many peaks of the Eurozone crisis–the Greek Prime Minister unexpectedly announced that, in addition to a parliamentary vote of confidence, a referendum would be held to legitimate the painful terms and conditions of the bail-out. The …