Article 1 [Functioning of the Union, Treaties Same Value]

Following the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, the Council recommended implementing the substantive aspects of that Treaty by amending the existing ones. The Treaty on European Union was to be preserved, and the EC-Treaty renamed “Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”. In the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 1 was created ex novo as an entry rule to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Neither on the EEC Treaty (1957) nor on the EC Treaty (1992) it was necessary to draft a provision which defines the “functioning of the Community/Union” and emphasises the equal legal value of the Treaties. For the authors of the Lisbon Treaty, this requirement arose from the fact that the former three communities stood side-by-side (“pillar structure”), each based on a specific treaty. During the validity of the previous Treaties, it was also not necessary to summarise the contents of a treaty in an introductory provision, in particular because the topos “functioning” is a term used to identify, “the areas of delimitation of, and arrangements for exercising its competences” as the core contents of TFEU which was developed out of the EEC/EC Treaty.