A Short Summary on „Lisbon Shifts Power from Small States to the Big Four“

A Short Summary on „Lisbon shifts power from small states to the Big Four“

The article that I read is about the autor´s discontent with the Lisbon Treaty as it virtually turns the European Union into something quite similar to the Soviet Union – a huge union with one big centre of power.
The author himself is from Ireland and he is especially unhappy with the Lisbon Treaty as Ireland is a relatively small country, just as is Estonia, and he finds that a small country like Ireland will lose a lot of their voting power in the European Union.
The problem, as the author describes, is that under the Lisbon Treaty countries do not appoint their commissioners, but merely make suggestions about them and the EU European Council would be the decision-maker. The Big Four do not have a problem with that as they control the Commission President and hence effectively the Commission alltogether. Hence the problem – power shifts away from most member states.
Also, the author raises the question about the Referendum Commissions summary which claims that the bundle brings no real change in neither the voting system or the centre of power. If so then why is the Lisbon Treaty neccesary at all? It seems that the Referendum Commission has been misleading us. And that doesn´t really seem to be in sync with the overall purpose of the union.

I chose the article in question because Estonia is about the same size as is Ireland and therefore has about the same voting power in the EU and hence – loses as much as Ireland does.
In essence the Lisbon Treaty changes Estonia from a republic into a province in the EU. In short, in less than twenty years we´ve gone from being a notional republic in one union, into another notional republic in another union. Once again we only represent the idea of a country.   The only difference is that during the Soviet-era we were the most western state and now we are the most eastern state of the big union.