The Lisbon Treaty could take effect before the 2009 European Parliament elections. The treaty could be approved by the Irish Parliament and exceptions can be given to the remaining changes that must be decided in a subsequent referendum.

The Lisbon Treaty leaves behind an urgent need for the consequences of our membership in the EU to be reflected more appropriately in the constitution than they are today. The Lisbon Treaty takes the last final steps in a long reform process and the Swedish constitution's life together with the EU is now entering a new phase with new requirements.

This compiled report contains contributions from Carl Fredrik Bergström, Jörgen Hettne, Josefin Almer and Maria Bergström. The report has been published within the framework of the project "A Constitution for Europe".

In this report the authors discuss the proposal for a hierarchy of legal acts as that was the result from the work of the European Convention on the Future of Europe. One objective with the proposal was to reduce the number of legal instruments and give them names which are readily understandable to the public.

The aim of this report is to identify some of those features which, since they are shared by all or some of the existing agencies, are essential in order to explain their legal nature and to highlight some problems that should be addressed in the process leading up to the adoption of a new constitutional treaty. At present, the role of decentralized agencies is premised on the Court of Justice’s idea of an institutional balance of powers, requiring an EU-institution to assume full responsibility.