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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 …