Commenting on the adoption of the EU reform treaty by the Lisbon summit, Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Co-Presidents of the Greens/EFA group today said:

"The adoption of the EU reform treaty in Lisbon has put a full stop to 6 years of constitutional wrangling. This Treaty contains the essential substance of the constitutional treaty, though regrettably in some areas such as Home and Justice Affairs and Common Foreign Affairs Policy we see that there has been a considerable deterioration compared to what the Constitutional Treaty was aiming for.

EU leaders have done their utmost to make the text incomprehensible to EU citizens by burying the content in protocols, footnotes and annexes. With this smoke screen operation they wanted to avoid referenda in the member states. This strategy by EU leaders means the ratification process ahead of us is not without risk. This also means that during the process of implementation of the Treaty, we could lose even more of the substance due to the unclear text.

Unfortunately, EU leaders did not grasp the significance of the No in France and the Netherlands. What they put forward in the treaty does not respond adequately to the crisis of confidence expressed in the EU referenda. Instead, they seized the opportunity to push through their own petty interests and are further alienating EU citizens. We regret that the UK and Poland were allowed to opt out of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It is a strange anomaly that certain member states choose not to subscribe to the core values of the union.

After the ratification process of what is now the Lisbon Treaty, the fight for a European constitution will again be on the agenda. This will become a huge challenge for Parliament, which should use its new won right of initiative to push for a true European democracy, a social Union and a Europe of citizens rather than just a Europe of States."