On October 19, 2007, the heads of government of the European Union, meeting informally in Lisbon, reached agreement on the text of a new treaty and ended a period of six years in which the union had been trying to settle its rules. The draft constitution had been rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005, and the new document was written to keep most of its substance while dropping the name and the symbols that had caused trouble. The name was dropped.
The text was largely the work of a convention and of the German presidency, and the details were settled over months of negotiation, with particular difficulty over the voting weights in the council. Under the arrangement reached in Lisbon, decisions in the council were to be taken by a double majority of member states and of population, and the number of commissioners was to be reduced, and the European Parliament was given more say. The charter of fundamental rights was made binding. The rules were new.
The treaty was signed at a ceremony in Lisbon on December 13, 2007, and then had to be ratified by each member state, which meant a vote or a parliamentary procedure in 27 countries. The Irish electorate rejected it in a referendum in June 2008 and approved it in a second vote in October 2009, after the other states agreed to keep one commissioner for each country. It entered into force on December 1, 2009. The wait was over.
The changes took effect with the new term of the commission. Herman Van Rompuy became the first permanent president of the European Council, and Catherine Ashton became the high representative for foreign affairs, and the union gained a single legal personality that allowed it to sign agreements in its own name. The treaty remains the basis of the union's rules, though later crises led to further agreements on the euro and on migration.