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Professor Anand Menon, the Director of the European Research Institute and Professor of West European Politics University of Birmingham’s interviewed by EurActiv

Claims the Reform Lisbon treaty is not necessary for the smooth running of the EU. He said that just as much legislation was being produced by the EU after the enlargements compared too previously.

Even under the procedures of the Nice Treaty, the enlarged European Union is functioning fine [...] Voting in the Council indicates that the EU has not slowed down at all. It is producing legislation with the same speed as before. There isn’t an institutional crisis to be addressed,” In terms of decision-making, there is no evidence that it has slowed down.

Professor Menon also expressed some doubts about some other innovations in the treaty he said he did could not be sure how the presidency and the new external service would work. He was welcoming of the ability of national parliaments to be allowed to get a say, however limited, in the process of EU legalisation and said a yellow card system was a welcome step in connecting national politicians with what is going on in the EU., on draft Commission proposals.
Something which stands out as being a little off colour is what he said about people not understanding the EU;
I think that a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the European Union and fundamentally misunderstand the limits of this sort of co-operation between the nation states.

This to my mind ignores that fact that it is not just co-operation between member states, but interaction with the central EU always in the picture and always putting its values and its wishes above those of the member states. This is something the Lisbon Treaty makes absolutely clear. As much is acknowledged in the following sentence;

Ultimately, one of the problems we have is a lack of faith in the supranational institutions.

On the on hand Professor Menon is describing a something likened to a confederation where the members co-operate, but on the other he is arguing for the supranational intuitions of the EU.

“But the principal thing is that the central institutions of the European Union have to be trusted by all members and seen as impartial by all members.”

The problem I see is that the central EU is not impartial it promotes itself and is not as described an impartial middleman between members. This I believe is evidence that the professor is himself fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the European Union.
But if he is to be believed there was no intuitional need for the great rush to get the reformed constitution ratified. Which rather gives the lie to all of those who are even now threatening dire problems and issuing stark warnings that a no vote would carry repercussions that would do immense damage to Ireland, and would be a disaster for the country, and that the whole of the EU will grind to a halt.

It would seem to be only just so much scare tactics, as should the Irish do us all a favour and vote to reject this treaty, nothing at all much will happen the EU will continue to work smoothly and continue to be able to create its legislation.

We should of course be now demanding an answer to the very important question Professor Menon`s research throws up; if the EU is working smoothly and there is not intuitional need for a treaty, then what is the real reason for the treaty what does it do that cannot be done at present? Well in the main it advances the federalists grip on the EU, transfers even more power to the centre and gives the EU legal entity. As usual the EU is using enlargement, which many thought would lead to ales centralisation as an excuse to create more integration and more centralisation.