I don’t pretend to understand European politics, but the folks at Brussels Journal think France has just signed away its sovereignty.

Today, France’s deputies and senators meeting in Parliament in Versailles ratified by a vote of 560 to 181 the constitutional revision that precedes the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon. The result of this voting opens the way for the final ratification, Thursday, first at the National Assembly, then the Senate. Out of 893 present, 741 voted.

France is the 5th country after Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Malta to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, in which they sign their sovereignty away.

What does it all mean?

An analysis by Prof. Anthony Coughlan

Today the European Union leaders signed the Lisbon Treaty. This treaty gives the EU the constitutional form of a state. These are the ten most important things the Lisbon Treaty does:

1. It establishes a legally new European Union in the constitutional form of a supranational European State.
2. It empowers this new European Union to act as a State vis-a-vis other States and its own citizens.
3. It makes us all citizens of this new European Union.
4. To hide the enormity of the change, the same name – European Union – will be kept while the Lisbon Treaty changes fundamentally the legal and constitutional nature of the Union.
5. It creates a Union Parliament for the Union’s new citizens.
6. It creates a Cabinet Government of the new Union.
7. It creates a new Union political President.
8. It creates a civil rights code for the new Union’s citizens.
9. It makes national Parliaments subordinate to the new Union.
10. It gives the new Union self-empowerment powers.