Reform of the procedures for the revision of the European Union treaties under the Treaty of Lisbon : a new typology of intergovernmental conferences

The first research objective of the article is to analyse the institutional and legal instruments for the revision of the European Union treaties, including the ordinary revision procedure, the two simplified revision procedures, the specific passerelle clauses, the flexibility clause and other mechanisms for amending theEU treaties. The second research objective is to propose a new typology of intergovernmental conferences. The author formulates two research hypotheses. The first assumes that the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty of 13 December 2007 to the revision procedures enabled the development of a new typology of intergovernmental conferences. The second hypothesis is that the modifications introduced by this international agreement significantly increased the flexibility of EU’s treaty revision procedures. Following this, the author poses three research questions. First, according to what criteria was the new typology of intergovernmental conferences defined? Secondly, how did the Lisbon Treaty make the revision procedures more flexible? Thirdly, did the changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty lengthen or shorten the treaty revision process? The author has used the institutional-legal method in this work and has referred to the theory of neoliberal institutionalism.