So, a glorious 2nd place. I’m only happy that we’ve managed to beat the French. Sarkozy was arrogantly sure that they will ratify before anyone else does. Wanting to be first is intellectually questionable in the first place. This is no Olympic games, you don’t win by doing it first.
So, ratification done in the parliament, the option of holding a referendum was dismissed. There was a wide agreement that the Treaty should be ratified, with some political parties from the opposition complaining there was no debate with the public on the matter. And indeed, there was nothing. Nothing. Sure, Slovenia is currently chairing the EU, which makes the EU omnipresent anyway. This would be the only reason why I could tolerate the absence of any information campaign. But of course I won’t, I think it’s a shame.
Plus, we still don’t have official consolidated versions of the Treaty. It’s a monster left intentionally unreadable. So, here you have some semi-official versions and some freelance versions (English, French, German):
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/FCO_PDF_CM7310_ConsolidatedTreaties.pdf
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/pdf/rap-info/i0439.pdf
http://www.mwalther.net/europa/Unionsrecht-Lissabon-MWalther.pdf
I know no one will enjoy reading them. But you can print the stuff and if you work with the EU as a professional, you can then look for the right Article. You can compare these versions with the official one from the Council website:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.asp?id=1296〈=en
I’m the first in line to see the institutional question closed. But with a bit of decency. The Constitution failed in 2005 in two referendums. What the subsequent IGC did is strip it of the most “contested elements” (supremacy of EU law, competition, symbols…) and re-packaged it in an unreadable format calling it Lisbon Treaty. The strategy now is to ratify it as soon as possible, with as little public debate as possible. This comes with a reasoning. The governments are not confident enough to win an open debate on Europe with their publics. This worries me, as much as makes the Eurosceptics happy.
Things are looking less than perfect in Ireland. I still hope the Treaty gets through though, because a second failure would symbolically kill a stronger EU for the next decades.
Marko Bucik 
Hi Marko. I was reading the Treaty recently and have to agree that its a tough one. The people who dismissed the Constitution should regret it now – they are getting the same things but in a much less readable form. But unreadable is a bit exagerated. It’s not a bedtime story, its an international treaty, and if anyone really wants to understand it they will.
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Actually Slovenia was the third country to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. What counts is the order in which the Instruments of Ratification are deposited in Rome.
Malta was the second, on the same day as Hungary, I believe.
But as you said, we are not dealing with the Olympics…
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@Kacper: You’re perfectly right about the Constitution, it was a much better read. This is why I can’t understand your position on the Lisbon Treaty. Most of the international treaties are easy to read, actually. It’s only if you try to pack 300 amendments on 2 different treaties that you get a mess…
@Andrew: this is something I didn’t know, quite interesting. But we came second into the news, this counts as well, doesn’t it:)
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