There is broad consensus amongst the Heads of State and government of the Twenty-Seven, as well as within the European Commission, that the conditions are not in place to open the Pandora’s box of revising the Treaty of Lisbon – signed in the Portuguese capital in December 2007 – before the end of the 2024–2029 parliamentary term.
The complicated and at times confusing proposals to amend that Treaty, approved on 22 November 2023 (LINK) by a minority of the Strasbourg Assembly (295 MEPs out of 720) – with two-thirds of the EPP group and other Euro-sceptic right-wing groups, which had grown stronger following the 2024 European elections, voting against – would, moreover, be bound to complicate the search for consensus at a future Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and to make ratifications impossible in Member States obliged to hold thirteen separate national referendums, even in the unlikely event that governments were to reach a unanimous agreement at the IGC – and this is without taking into account the possibility that, between the end of the IGC and the parliamentary ratifications, political majorities might change radically, as happened in 1954 with the European Defence Community (EDC).
This view is also prevalent within the majority of the European Parliament, where the alliance that had led, in November 2024, to the vote of confidence in the second Commission, chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, has broken down, and has been progressively replaced by a new right-centre alliance in which the so-called ‘cordon sanitaire’ – which excluded the sovereigntists, divided into three groups (PIE, ECR and ESN), and regressive policies on environmental, social and migration issues have become entrenched, with devastating effects on policies that had long been based on consensus around a shared pro-European vision.
In the few hours that the Twenty-Seven will devote to the European Council on 15 and 16 October to reflect on future European strategies, based on the mandate they assigned themselves on 18 and 19 June (LINK1 – LINK2) on finance, migration, defence and enlargement/reforms, there will be no room for flights of fancy about Europe’s future, as at least the French, Italian, Polish and Spanish leaders around the table at the Europa Building in Brussels will be far more focused on the elections in their own countries – where there is a strong possibility of changes in governing majorities, if not of regime change – knowing that European decisions on European Union (EU) policies, the management of migration flows, military spending and relations with candidate countries could influence voters’ preferences and future parliamentary alliances.
The fact that the Treaty of Lisbon will remain unchanged at least until 2029 is certainly no reason to succumb to the governments’ prolonged sleep, which increases the costs of ‘non-Europe’ through decisions that have not been taken or wrong decisions, as Leone XIV pointed out in Lampedusa when criticising Europe on the issue of migration policies.
For each of the issues to be discussed by European leaders in mid-October, there are alternatives to this governmental inaction, which calls for the mobilisation of national public opinion during election campaigns whose outcomes will impact not only the process of European integration but also the “genesis and democratisation of European society”, as Amin von Bogdandy reminds us in his reflections.
B Setting aside the convoluted and ineffective avenues of enhanced or permanent structured cooperation – which needlessly preoccupy European insiders but remain closed off and marginalised within the EU institutions – strategic issues must be addressed outside the buildings of power, in accordance with the principles of participatory democracy, because:
- European finances demand radical action to safeguard European public goods – not as a substitute for national ones, but to address new transnational challenges such as climate change, the energy transition towards a society free from fossil fuels, Europe’s technological decline, European colonisation of the infosphere and its social consequences, health promotion and the fight against rare diseases for an equitable and sustainable healthcare system that addresses growing physical and mental disabilities, cyber security,
- all of this requires a redistributive fiscal system based on the principles of efficiency, equality and growth, which goes beyond the outdated notion that an ambitious European budget would merely generate economies of scale by reducing national expenditure and budgets; rather, that budget should provide for additional resources that address negative externalities and the hidden wealth of nations, the profits that generate inequalities in financial transactions and the tax avoidance by multinationals and web giants, accompanied by a narrative that explains the added value of shared sovereignty and genuine own resources, recognised as such by European citizens,
- inclusive migration policies will have potentially positive effects on European society as a whole – in economic, social, cultural and demographic terms – provided that they are freed from a security-driven approach and form part of foreign and cooperation policy on the one hand, and welfare policy on the other,
- the issue of defence – that is, the security of the EU and the candidate countries – must be enshrined, contrary to what has happened, so far within the framework of external relations and the prospect of reopening a continental dialogue, as occurred in 1975 and then in 1990 regarding security and cooperation, and which also entails a multilateral – rather than merely bilateral – approach in the Mediterranean Pact and with the Middle East,
- the enlargement process entails an ongoing dialogue with the societies of the candidate countries – a dialogue which has so far been inadequate or non-existent, primarily on the part of the EU’s public sphere which has prioritised the institutional dimension – and which must lead to progressive involvement in common policies and their essential reforms,
- the enlargement process requires, as an indispensable prerequisite, the idea that accession negotiations be accompanied by the launch of a parallel constitutional process based on the principle of shared sovereignty, overcoming the absolute sovereignty of nations, renouncing the power of veto and the creation of transnational citizenship.
Only by doing so will we be able to provide a democratic and effective response to the strategic choices for the future of Europe.
Rome, 8 July 2026
Pier Virgilio Dastoli