E.U. settles for less

last updated 8 January 2015

Brussels

The European Union last week ended a seven-year effort to pass a unifying European constitution and agreed instead to a scaled-back intergovernmental treaty. The treaty, which still must be ratified by the E.U.’s 27 member-nations, creates several new E.U. offices and a new voting system. But it dropped the proposed Charter of Fundamental Rights, which many Europeans saw as a threat to national sovereignty, and no longer calls for an E.U. anthem. E.U. leaders said they would now be free to focus on important issues such as climate change. “What counts for me is that we have emerged from paralysis,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.