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Brussels: European Union leaders aim to end a decade of institutional wrangling this week by approving a treaty to reform the 27-state bloc's hardened structures.
Two years after French and Dutch voters cast Europe into a crisis of confidence by rejecting a draft constitution, the EU is set to move forward again with clearer leadership, a stronger foreign policy machine and more democratic decision-making.
"Adopting the text of the Reform Treaty means not only that the European Union will be able to concentrate its efforts on questions which more directly affect and concern its citizens, but also that it will be able to do so more efficiently," Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, the summit's host, wrote in a letter to fellow leaders.
Only minor issues involving Poland, Italy, Bulgaria and Austria remain to be straightened out at the two-day Lisbon summit that starts tomorrow.
The EU has been trying and failing to overhaul its institutions since the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, which achieved minor innovations, followed by the 2000 Nice Treaty, which made decision-making even more complicated.
Ratification
Barring any surprises in ratification - only Ireland plans a referendum - the new rulebook will enter into force in 2009.
"In terms of the political consequences, what this treaty does is bury finally the old debate about whether we are going to have an EU of nation states or whether we are heading for a federal superstate," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told BBC radio. That was why federalists were unhappy, he said.
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