More to Come

The politicians' speeches all sounded strangely similar. A "historic day," a "milestone," a "new stage" and a "managed crisis:" all words that were used before at the signing of a treaty three years ago in Rome. That's when the then 25 EU heads of government signed the EU constitution in a ceremony just as serious and solemn as in Lisbon. But everyone knows what happened to the constitution draft -- it failed after voters in France and the Netherlands rejected it. Then a number of countries, including Great Britain and Poland, developed fundamental aversions to the constitutional project.

During two and a half years of painful discussions, a new EU treaty was created -- a watered-down constitution that happens to be called the "Treaty of Lisbon" because Portugal holds the rotating EU presidency. The evaluations of the constitution signed in Rome and the reform treaty signed in Lisbon are the same. Now one can only hope that the "treaty" doesn't meet the same fate as her big sister, the "constitution."

The reform treaty -- or the treaty of changes, as the European Council's president for the first half of 2007, Germany's Angela Merkel, called it -- still has to be ratified by the bloc's 27 member states within a year to become binding international legislation. At the moment, it looks like only Great Britain could still cause problems. The euro-skeptics there are vehemently calling for a referendum. Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to avoid one because he knows very well that his countrymen and women could reject the treaty. They believe in a fairy tale of a European super-state that might be created by the treaty. But actually all the state symbols, like a flag or anthem, have been explicitly struck from the text.

The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, cited an old, but no less true, EU principle in Lisbon: Europeans have always emerged stronger from a crisis. It's true that the Treaty of Lisbon contains the tools to modernize the EU and fit the union's growing size. But it's also true that the EU doesn't make any of the long overdue statements about which direction the EU should be heading and where its borders possibly lie. This debate is still pending. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that he wants to lead the debate during his council presidency in the second half of 2008.

The eternal dispute between the EU's two camps -- those who want to deepen ties and those who want to expand as quickly as possible -- can't be decided. Not even the Lisbon Treaty will be able to do it. The treaty is a milestone, but it will never be the keystone. As in the past 50 years, the EU will develop -- sometimes faster, sometimes slower -- and the Treaty of Lisbon won't be the last one.

But there is one consolation for euro-skeptics: for the first time, a treaty offers the possibility to leave the European Union.

Bernd Riegert is DW-RADIO's Brussels correspondent. (sms)