EU leaders converge on Lisbon to sign landmark reform treaty

Partial view of the Jeronimo monastery where EU leaders will converge
©AFP - Eric Feferberg

LISBON - EU leaders converge on Lisbon Thursday to sign a landmark treaty which they hope will revitalise the expanded bloc and allow them to refocus their energies on wider issues after years of navel-gazing.

One notable absentee at the morning signing ceremony of heads of state and government and foreign ministers will be British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

A diary clash in London means he will miss the ceremony, at a monastery in the Portuguese capital, and sign only after he arrives in Lisbon at lunchtime, leading to accusations at home of a "semi-detached" attitude to Europe.

The EU flying circus will move on to Brussels on Friday for a summit where the leaders will be hoping to show they are now concentrating on pressing issues such as globalisation, global warming and immigration.

The "Treaty of Lisbon", agreed in October after long and sometimes heated negotiations, was designed to replace the EU constitution which was scuppered by French and Dutch voters in 2005 national referendums.

The EU leaders deem the 250-plus page treaty vital to streamline the functioning of a regional grouping which has ballooned from 15 to 27 nations since 2004 while pushing deep into the former Soviet bloc.

Like the rejected constitution, the treaty includes plans for a European foreign policy supremo and a more permanent president -- former British prime minister Tony Blair has been one name bandied around -- to replace the cumbersome six-month rotating presidency system.

TV crews set up their cameras in the Jeronimo monastery
©AFP - Eric Feferberg

It also cuts the size of the European Parliament and the number of EU decisions which require unanimous support from member states, hence reducing national vetoes.

However it drops all references to the EU flag or anthem, to assuage eurosceptic fears of another step along the slippery slope towards a federal Europe.

Attached to the new treaty is a European charter of fundamental rights which enshrines the rights of dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity and justice, although Britain and Poland are opting out of making that binding.

At the European Parliament on Wednesday, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates and the heads of the EU's main institutions signed the charter, but not without the spectre of treaty referendums very noisily arising.

During the ceremony MEPs from the far-left and right chanted "referendum" and attempted to shout down Socrates as he addressed the assembly.

After the Lisbon signing the 27 member states will have a year to ratify the text, if it is to come into force as planned in January 2009.

Many EU governments, including France and the Netherlands, have said there will be no need for national referendums this time around.

The treaty "does not transfer sovereignty to the EU ... and there is no judicial reason to resort to a referendum," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen argued on Tuesday.

However for those clamouring for national votes on the treaty, the words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the father of the abandoned European constitution, ring true.

Far-left and far-right deputies who support a referendum on the Lisbon treaty stage a protest in Strasbourg
©AFP - Frederick Florin

He has said that legal experts had "taken the original draft constitution, blown it apart into separate elements, and have then attached them, one by one, to existing treaties."

Only Ireland is constitutionally bound to put the issue to a vote.

In order to avoid a British referendum, London was granted key policy opt-outs, its cherished "red lines" on foreign policy, labour rights, the common law and the tax and social security systems.

With some leaders sharing flights to keep their carbon footprint down, the summiteers move on to Brussels Friday, keen to get back to the future.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is championing the idea of an expert "reflection group" to study the EU's opportunities and challenges up to 2020-2030, while Britain has helped draw up an EU declaration on globalisation for the EU leaders to adopt.

On the foreign policy front the issues of Kosovo's independence bid and Iran's nuclear programme will top Friday's agenda.

"It's time to draw a line under the institutional debate," one British diplomat said.