Britain and the Negotiation of the Lisbon Treaty

Abstract

Over the course of the last two decades there have been numerous intergovernmental conference (IGC) negotiations: the 1985 talks that led to the Single European Act (SEA), the 1990-1991 parallel negotiations on monetary and political union that culminated in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, the 1996-1997 discussions that produced the Amsterdam Treaty, the 2000 negotiations that resulted in the Nice Treaty, the 2003-2004 talks that produced the failed Constitutional Treaty, and finally the 2007 negotiations that culminated in the Treaty of Lisbon. This chapter explores a particular dimension of Britain’s European policy by focusing on Britain’s engagement in the IGC negotiations that led to the Treaty of Lisbon. In so doing, it builds on existing literature on IGC bargaining and Britain’s relationship with the EU (Blair 2007a; Blair 2008).