A new set of rules for the European Union was signed at a monastery in the Portuguese capital on Thursday morning, officially turning the document into the Treaty of Lisbon. The Lisbon Treaty is designed to speed up decision-making in the expanded European Union. It will also create a new president of the European Council, a new EU foreign affairs chief, a reformed voting system and scrap vetoes in dozens of areas.
The Maltese Prime Minister Dr Lawrence Gonzi flew to Lisbon on Thursday to meet with the other EU leaders for the signing of the new treaty for the European Union.
With the new Treaty, Malta will retain the minimum capping of six seats in the European Parliament for a Member States. This means that in the 2009 European Parliament elections, Malta will get an extra representative on the present five. The Maltese Parliament had unanimously ratified the Constitution for Europe on 6 July 2005. It is expected that the Lisbon Treaty will again be passed solely through the Maltese Parliament without holding a referendum.
PM Gonzi was also accompanied by Foreign Minister Michael Frendo and Malta’s Permanent Representative to the EU Richard Cachia Caruana.
Meanwhile, Dr Gonzi is currently in Brussels for the European Council meeting to be held on Friday.
In the last-minute negotiations, Italy gained an extra seat in the future European Parliament, returning it to parity with the UK and restoring Italian national pride, a BBC correspondent said. Poland secured a guarantee that small groups of countries would be able to delay EU decisions they do not like - a victory for the Polish government just days before Sunday's early parliamentary election, she adds.
Earlier, Austria reached a deal over its bid to maintain quotas for foreign students, with the European Commission agreeing to suspend for five years its legal action over the country's quota. Bulgaria also won the right to call the EU single currency the "evro", rather than euro, in its Cyrillic alphabet, BBC added.
