The EU Council Post-Lisbon: Responding to Multiple Challenges

The paper will analyse the post-Lisbon legislative process in the EU from the perspective of the EU Council, the ultimate legislator whose position was influenced by the Lisbon Treaty, particularly by the introduction of the ordinary legislative procedure. The co-decision of the European Parliament became a norm on one hand, on the other hand we saw a significant drop of the number of co-decision files introduced by the European Commission after the Lisbon Treaty was ratified. Some of the recent literature claims that the changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty have shifted the balance among the main legislative institutions. Other resources point to the fact that the agenda of the European Union was significantly affected by the challenges presented by the economic and monetary crisis. The paper will examine the data on legislative proposals introduced by the Commission both before and after the Lisbon Treaty came into force, focusing on the policy content of the proposals, the institutional changes possibly changing the inter-institutional balance and the dynamics of global agenda. The paper will try to identify the factors that have changed the output of the legislative decision-making of the Council after the Lisbon Treaty came into force.