Is the European Legislator after Lisbon a Real Legislature?

This article questions the nature and character of the amendments the Lisbon Treaty makes to the EU's legislative procedures. Do these changes make for real legislature? If we want to know that, the first question to be addressed is: what actually make for a real legislature? What are the criteria? The paper lists five (competence, parliamentary involvement, binding power, power of conferral of legislative power, power of ratification and primacy). The Lisbon Treaty innovations - creating an 'ordinary' legislative procedure for EU Law, providing instruments and a framework for delegation and implementation - are reviewed using these criteria. The paper concludes that - technically speaking - the Lisbon Treaty does in effect establish a real legislature. If it wants to be a legitimate one, however, it needs to involve the European people and national parliaments more in its operations