Croatia’s Parl. Speaker on Lisbon Treaty in Paris

The speaker believes that citizens could gain the most with the Lisbon Treaty which establishes a democracy of participation.

ZAGREB, CROATIA – The Lisbon Treaty is the result of a visionary idea on the necessity to “deepen” the European Union, but institutional reform should also be a clear signal that, after “deepening”, the EU is ready to continue long-term its most successful policy, the police of enlargement, Croatian Parliament Speaker Luka Bebic said in Paris on Friday. 

Ready for challenges of the 21st century

Luka Bebic held a speech on the subject “The Future of EU Institutions and the Implementation of Conclusions of the Lisbon Treaty in National Parliaments” which opened the conference of EU member countries and candidates.

Bebic recalled that the world we live in has changed significantly and that the EU today is completely different than it used to be, primarily because every enlargement strengthened the need for a wide and more intensive dialogue and an exchange of opinion, adding that the EU has started changing its own infrastructure, with the Lisbon Treaty as the result.

With the Lisbon Treaty, the EU will boost its institutional capacities to solve topical issues of European and world policy and profile itself more convincingly as a global factor ready for challenges of the 21st century – Bebic stressed.

You will agree that citizens will achieve the most with the Lisbon Treaty which establishes a participant democracy as a new form of interaction between citizens and EU institutions, he said.

National parliament is the main political body 

A more intensive cooperation with national parliaments, whose role is very accentuated in the Lisbon Treaty, is one of the important parts of the more important democratic legitimacy of the EU, Bebic said, especially stressing the principle of subsidiarity with which parliaments gain a new role.

For the first time, national parliaments will be able to directly become involved in the decision-making progress within the EU by establishing political monitoring, that is, the application of the principle of subsidiarity, he stressed.

In this way, he said, a feeling of “double democratic deficit” of European institutions will be prevented and a guarantee provided that a national parliament, after the country enters the EU, will remain the main political decision-making body.