EU Treaty deal agreed
European Union leaders in Belgium agreed early today on guidelines for drafting a new EU treaty to replace the aborted EU constitution, officials said.
The deal came after arduous and acrimonious summit negotiations in Brussels that lasted late into the night.
“Things have been taken care of,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
The drafting of a new governing treaty is expected to begin in the coming months with the goal of having the rulebook in place by 2009.
All 27 leaders – including Poland, which had staged fierce opposition to parts of the German proposal – agreed to a “very precise mandate” to draft a streamlined treaty that will guide and govern the expanded EU, Sarkozy said.
“It is very good news for Europe, for France,” the French leader said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had made it a priority of her country’s six-month EU presidency to come up with a viable plan for a treaty to replace the now-defunct EU charter that Dutch and French voters rejected two years ago.
She sought to salvage key parts of the stalled constitution necessary to streamline EU decision making – a stance that met with fierce resistance from Poland and Britain, which said any new treaty cannot resemble the failed charter.
“The most important thing here is that the constitutional treaty was put to one side. This deal gives us a chance to move on,” Tony Blair said.
