The European Union may be able to winkle out of the fraught process of a full treaty change via a clever legal trick, EU Council President Herman van Rompuy has suggested.
According to a two-page report from the Belgian EU chief submitted to national capitals on Tuesday (6 December), by amending a protocol attached to the Lisbon Treaty rather than changing the treaty itself, the lengthy and politically uncertain path of referendums and ratification by national parliaments can be avoided entirely.
How can Europeans trust overlords who seek ways to get around inconvenient rules designed to keep the people in control of the process?
Well, "Europeans" can trust them, I suppose. But Germans, French, Poles, Dutch, and all the other still sovereign people should care a great deal about how the system works.
Do they need a freaking Oracle of Delphi to see how this is going?
