Timothy Gardon Ash, sobre o Tratado de Lisboa

A mensagem (e título) do artigo de Timothy Gardon Ash, no Guardian (Comment is free) , é: "This treaty is a mess, but it will free Europe to do more important things". De acordo, sem mais qualificações (para já). O artigo faz referências simpáticas a Lisboa. Eis um excerto:

Yet the European Union continues to function and grow. "Eppur si muove" (And yet
it moves) - Galileo's legendary defiant sigh - is perhaps the true, secret motto
of the European Union. Our leading expert on the EU's institutions, Professor
Helen Wallace, has just published a report on how the EU has been working since
the great eastward enlargement of May 2004. Against sombre predictions of
gridlock, she finds that it has continued to work rather well, through pragmatic
adaptation and non-treaty reforms. Now this amending treaty of Lisbon, modest
and hedged about with qualifications though it is, should enable the union to
work just a little bit better when - assuming all 27 member states ratify it -
it comes into force in January 2009. But a noble constitutional document,
comparable to that of the United States, it is not. It more nearly resembles the
instruction manual for a forklift truck.
In itself, it will do nothing to
convince Europe's citizens, or the rest of the world, of what the European Union
is good for. But it will help the EU to do things that may convince them. Now
that the end of this long, disappointing constitutional debate is at last in
sight, it should free us to concentrate on what this union does, rather than
what it is, or says it is. In fact, the EU will define what it is by what it
does. Will it help to create jobs, strengthen a free-trading world, encourage
development, or combat climate change? What can it offer neighbours who will not
become members, in the arc of crisis that surrounds us, from Murmansk to
Casablanca? We cannot wait until January 2009 to address these questions. By
then, a new American president will want to hear our answers.