EU maps out future amid setbacks

Laurence Peter
BBC
Saturday, June 21, 2008

Try as they might to talk about other pressing issues, EU leaders kept bumping into the elephant in the room - the Lisbon Treaty.

Last year's German triumph in clinching the reform treaty after some eight years of institutional wrangling now looks like a pyrrhic victory.

The Irish No vote on Lisbon dominated the Brussels summit, with new cracks appearing just when EU leaders thought they had papered them over.

In a surprise announcement after the talks, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said full British ratification would have to wait until a court ruling on a Euro-sceptic millionaire's demand for a referendum on Lisbon.

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The summit conclusions meanwhile noted - in a footnote - that ratification in the Czech Republic would not be complete until the country's constitutional court made a ruling on the treaty.

The 27-nation EU will return to the Lisbon stumbling block in October - by which time Irish leaders will need to have mapped out a way forward, based on detailed analysis of Irish anxieties about the treaty.

Does no mean no?

Lisbon is designed to reshape EU institutions to ease decision-making in the enlarged bloc.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she agreed with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that without Lisbon, further enlargement could not proceed. And Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the 27 countries were legally obliged to ratify the treaty - the governments had not signed up to it "just for fun".

But the leaders avoided answering the question: would the Irish be asked to vote again?

Full article here.

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