(LJUBLJANA) - Slovenia, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, ratified Tuesday the bloc's reform treaty, the second member state to back the landmark document after Hungary.

The law ratifying the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, hammered out at a summit in the Portuguese capital last year, was backed by 74 lawmakers in Slovenia's 90-seat parliament, with six votes against it.

"You represent the two million citizens of Slovenia but also you are deciding for the almost half a billion citizens (of the EU)," Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa told lawmakers in urging them to support the treaty.

The Lisbon Treaty, a watered down version of the EU consitution that was scuppered after being rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, must be ratified in all 27 EU member states before it can come into force, as planned, in 2009.

Slovenia was one of the 18 EU states that had supported the 2005 constitution and Jansa said those efforts were "not in vain since it was thanks to the moral weight of those states that most of the solutions from that document could be preserved in the reform (Lisbon) treaty."

The main opposition centre-left Social Democrat Party also backed the treaty, noting that Slovenia bears particular responsability in the ratification process as it holds the EU presidency through June.

"That is why it is proper that we are among the first to ratify the Lisbon treaty," Darja Lavtizar Bebler said speaking for the SD parliamentary group.

Like the rejected constitution, the reform treaty proposes a European foreign policy supremo and a permanent president to replace the six-month rotation system.

It also cuts the size of the European Parliament and the number of EU decisions which require unanimous support thus reducing national vetoes.

It also includes a European charter of fundamental human and legal rights, which Britain and Poland have refused to make binding.

However it drops all references to an EU flag or anthem, which had fanned eurosceptic fears of another step towards a federal Europe.

Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who helped draft the rejected EU constitution, expressed his optimism over the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty during a visit to Ljubljana on Tuesday.

"There are 22 or even 24 states that will most certaingly ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Besides that, the ratification process in most of the states will go through parliamentary procedures and so far there seem to be no risks of rejection," he said.

In a statement released from Brussels, the Slovenian prime minister said the new treaty "will provide the European Union with a clearly visible European identity and will offer excellent possibilities to enhance its role as a global actor in accordance with its economic as well as general strength."

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