A pitiful exercise in Euro-minimalism

This was not Europe’s finest hour. After eight years of tortured labour, the mountain brought forth a mouse. Supporters of the European Union are dismayed, just as Eurosceptics are sneeringly exultant. Both camps should have little trouble agreeing this was a colossal failure of ambition.

It did not need to be this way. Nor is it to disparage the qualities of Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister, or Lady Ashton, the EU trade commissioner, to say they are not the obvious answer to the Lisbon treaty’s search for ways Europe can punch its weight, through the new offices of a permanent president of the council and a newly empowered foreign policy chief.