The EU is a confused political mess, and Lisbon hasn't helped this is any way. There's no clear sense of what the EU is, of what it's trying to be, or of why it might be a good thing for countries to belong to it.
There are plenty of hints and suggestions available for the few people who take an interest in EU politics, but they're not necessarily consistent. The Commission likes to doodle neoliberal economic schemes, the ECB largely supports that, the Parliament is more liberal and open.
None of this is obvious to outsiders, who seem to believe there's a single monolith called the EU, and it wants to eat their babies. So the bottom-up reality is that from the outside, the EU political process is almost completely opaque.
I'm sure it's possible to sell the EU project, but the EU pols seem to resent the idea that they should have to.
You can't run a power bloc like this. There's no point trying to expand indefinitely if the home populations aren't solidly supportive and enthusiastic.
Then have an official explicit EU-wide referendum.
Time for me to peddle my mini treaty again?
1. The EU bill of rights (Title II of the current treaty). 2. Union membership rules (Title IX of the current treaty, including Article I-60 on Voluntary withdrawal from the Union) 3. The 2009 European Parliament will be a constitutional assembly 4. Referendum rules: The treaty shall be put to a vote by referendum simultaneously in all EU members states. The result of the referendum will be binding if at least 50% of all EU citizens cast a valid vote in it. The treaty shall come into force only if at least 50% of valid votes in a binding referendum support the treaty. In that case, An EU member state shall be considered to have approved the treaty if it is supported by at least 50% of valid votes in that member state, and the number of valid votes in that member state is at least 50% of the eligible voters. An EU member state where the treaty is not approved shall hold a second referendum within 5 years, with the choices being approval of the treaty or withdrawal from the EU according to the provisions of the treaty. A transitory institutional regime shall apply as long as there are any remaining EU Member States which have not approved the treaty and have not yet held a second referendum.
The result of the referendum will be binding if at least 50% of all EU citizens cast a valid vote in it.
The treaty shall come into force only if at least 50% of valid votes in a binding referendum support the treaty. In that case,
The problem is that all 27 countries would have to unanimously agree to this as there is no constitutional basis for holding such a referendum at the moment. And in a purely EU wide referendum the smaller countries would be swamped, and therefor wouldn't agree to it. That is why we have a slow moving fudge - from unanimity to qualifies majority voting in more and more areas - the "qualified" majority being designed to ensure that larger countries can't railroad smaller ones, and that large majorities are required for changes. This is an improvement on unanimity, but even that small change has now been rejected and vetoed by 1% of the EU population. "It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
You can't have (our usual kind of) democracy without the appearance of an explicit mandate. People really don't like it if you try to take that away from them, no matter how irrelevant it is in practice.
So given that Lisbon has been crafted to avoid the need for a formal popular mandate, it was never going to be acceptable.
The silliness about chipping babies and drafting them into the EU Child Zombie Flesh-Eating Radioactive Army would have been background noise if Lisbon had had a solid populist foundation.
(Not that I think that would help bringing such a referendum about. No doubt it would still be hard to achieve unanimous agreement amongst the 27 nations. But an EU-wide referendum does not have to mean straight up or down majority popular vote. However, such a plan would run into trouble with the German constitution, which I believe disallows referenda.)
