The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today handed down a decision in which it approved the Lisbon Treaty but delayed its ratification. According to the Court, there are no decisive constitutional objections to the Act Approving the Treaty of Lisbon. The Lisbon treaty is as such compatible with the German basic law (Grundgesetz). Moreover, in the view of the Constitutional Court, the treaty would not lead to the formation of a EU state but instead the EU would remain “an association of sovereign states to which the principle of conferral applies”. According to Andreas Vosskuhle, the presiding judge, “[i]f one…