This contribution analyzes the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on the so-called “structural equilibrium” of European integration.

Structural equilibrium is the European Union’s functional, but for

obvious reasons not nominal, equivalent of a federal equilibrium

in federal regimes. It stands for rules and principles that govern

the relationship between the constituent entities of the

integration—Member States and the European Union as a

supranational level—so that the integration can achieve its

selected objectives efficiently while simultaneously preserving the

Member States’ prerogatives. While the Treaty of Lisbon strikes a

delicate balance between the Member States and the European

Union, the post-Lisbon structural equilibrium might come as a

disappointment for many. It neither lives up to the equilibrium of a

constitutionalized federal state, nor does it meet the equilibrium of

a confederacy. The Treaty of Lisbon in structural terms contains

too little for a federation and too much for a confederacy.

However, this is not a cause for regret, but rather another

incentive to move European legal and political theory out of the

federal-confederal box. Consequently, this Article argues that the

Treaty of Lisbon puts up a structural equilibrium of its own kind,

which places European integration in the middle of a federal-confederal

continuum. This Article qualifies European integration

as a Union (Bund), a non-state, non-federal, and nonconstitutional

pluralist entity, which preserves the essential

autonomy of its Member States and the supranational level, the

European Union stricto sensu, within a viable common whole in a

manner achieved by neither federations nor confederacies in the

traditional sense.