As a proponent of the Treaty of Lisbon, Coughlan was noted to have "quietly withdrawn" from the first referendum campaign after she embarrassed the Government in a radio interview by not knowing the number of European Commissioners. Over a period of four days Coughlan stated that the EU's larger nations still had two Commissioners each. In fact, the bigger states had lost their second places on the Commission in 2004. According to an editorial in "The Irish Times", "how someone who had spent several years around an EU Council of Ministers' table could not know that is extraordinary".