Gotta say though, I am an EU fan.
Non-regulation bananas can be dangerous you know.

Basically all the Lisbon thing is about trying to make the EU work better. It’s a club that was set up with 6 members back in 57(?) and now has morphed into a gang of 27 but with the same rules as they had at the outset – rotating presidency, block initiatives you don’t like and stuff.
Only now 27 members means there’s a lot more scope for flakey governments to derail things than say 6. (Ever gone on holidays with more than 1 person – it’s politcally like that.) Ironically the biggest threat to stability is coming from the right – Poland had two oddball twins in power till last year and now Italy has elected Mr Mad again.
By the way if you don’t like the way the EU is going you should like maybe stop voting FF/FG (yeah, you the 70% of the population in Ireland and across the rest of the EU) and start voting more Labour/Green because ultimagely the EU reflects the political wishes of the majority.
Curiously despite this centre-right profile of EU states, the EU has still managed to pioneer lots of pro-consumer (read punter) legislation that would never have been passed in, say, Ireland (habitat, working hours, chemicals etc etc.). What’s more is what passes in the EU eventually affects what is passed in the rest of the world as if China/India/US/etc. want to sell stuff in the EU, they have to meet the standards here which are a lot f*cking higher than they are in Chine/India/US/etc.

EU – boring as hell but great.

I’ll reluctantly admit.

This is only a tangenital point, but I felt my voice should be heard.