ABSTRACT
On 13 December 2007, the heads of state and governments of the twentyseven member states signed the Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty is currently the last of a whole series of European treaty reforms resulting from intergovernmental conferences. The ‘big bangs’ of these treaty reforms include the Single European Act (1986), the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), the Treaty of Nice (2001), the unratified Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, and the Treaty of Lisbon (2007). The term ‘EU intergovernmental conferences’ describes the negotiations between the governments of the members preceding and surrounding the original Treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957), and the follow-up amendments. The reform treaties revised and extended the legal order – i.e. they contributed to the formal constitutionalization of this intergovernmental organization (see Hartley 2003, Schermers and Blokker 2003). Together with the founding treaties, they define the institutional design of the EU and its competences with regard to the member states.
