The Second meeting of European seminar on 12 September in Campus Den Haag was addressed by the former the Minister of Economic Affairs and of Agriculture Professor Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, currently professor of International and European Law in Leiden. The subject of his address was The Need for the Quick implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, with special reference to the crisis in Georgia.

Professor Brinkhorst began by stressing the nature of generational memory and by observing that the challenge to the post-war generation had passed. There was a need for a new rationale because the challenges of the new world were different. If the Netherlands wanted to count in shaping the new world, it had to find a way to exercise the common interest, and the Lisbon treaty offered a way of doing that. “I believe that the Lisbon treaty is totally necessary  as well as big number of important changes. Changes not for testifying Europe, but to be relevant in globalised world which is shaping the structures of the new world and not reacting and defending the values of the old”.

In the course of the lecture Professor. Brinkhorst further enumerated the changes made by the Lisbon treaty – making the EU a legal entity, bringing the three pillars together, revising majority voting weights, increasing the role of the European parliament, solidifying the presidency of the European Council, building a European external service.

Shared sovereignty, he declared, is already a reality and, internally, that should be recognized. The EU is a union of states and citizens. The external implications of the new order had still to be addressed. It required leadership to recognize the new reralities and to fight for the necessary changes. “In the World of Sovereign States, the EU cannot remain a butterfly, hovering beautifully, above it all”. The Georgia-Russia had revealed the EU in all its strengths and limitations.

The lecture provoked a lively exchange with the audience and the discussions continued into the reception afterwards… and for those students who went to dinner in the Hague afterwards, long into the night.

Professor Brinkhorst trained in Law and taught at Leiden university. In 1973, at the age of 35, he became minister of European Affairs before becoming a member of parliament (and, for a time, leader of D66). From 1983-1987 he was the EU’s ambassador to Japan. From 1994-1999 he was a member of the European parliament and joined the government in 1999, first as minister for agriculture and later as minister of economic affairs. In 2006 he returned to Leiden as Professor of International and European Law.