After reaching an agreement with Poland, European Union leaders meeting at an informal summit in Lisbon Oct. 18-19 struck a deal on the final wording of the EU Reform Treaty that will replace the EU constitution torpedoed by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005.

President Lech Kaczyński said Poland got "everything it wanted" during negotiations on the new treaty, which aims to make the expanded EU work more efficiently and which is expected to be signed in Lisbon Dec. 13.

"The European Union is coming out of an institutional crisis and is ready to meet future challenges," Jose Socrates, the prime minister of Portugal, which holds the EU's rotating presidency for six months until the end of the year, said after the negotiations lasting six hours. Jose Barroso, president of the European Commission, echoed, "I am extremely happy-the mission is now complete. We have reached a historic compromise and can look into the future with confidence."

The reform treaty preserves the most important institutional provisions of the draft European constitution, including the proposed appointment of an EU president for a term of two-and-a-half years. The treaty also reduces the number of European Commission members from 27 to 18 by 2014, and it gives the EU uniform legal status. It provides for the appointment of a high EU representative for foreign affairs, originally referred to as "the EU foreign minister."

If the ratification process goes smoothly, the new treaty will come into force Jan. 1, 2009. The previous draft treaty, known as the draft European constitution, had to be scrapped after France and the Netherlands rejected it in national referendums in 2005, triggering a crisis in the EU. But before the ratification process begins, EU leaders will meet again for a summit in the Portuguese capital Dec. 13 to officially sign the new draft treaty so that it can be called the Treaty of Lisbon.

To the surprise of observers-who expected that the Lisbon negotiations would be as time-consuming and difficult as those held during a June summit in Brussels-the leaders of the EU's 27 member states reached a compromise on the new treaty on the first day of their meeting. Socrates said this was largely due to an agreement reached with Poland on the so-called Ioannina mechanism, an arrangement whereby member countries representing 19.75 percent of the EU's total population will be able to block European Council decisions "for a reasonable period of time."

Commenting on the outcome of the summit, Paweł Zalewski, a politician from the Law and Justice (PiS) party and chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, said Poland "has contributed to building the EU system of government." Aside from the Ioannina mechanism, all other provisions included in the reform treaty had been agreed on before Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004, Zalewski said.

President Kaczyński said, "It is very good that this issue is behind us. Poland has got everything it wanted." The greatest success, Kaczyński said, is that, under a protocol attached to the treaty, any changes to the Ioannina mechanism will require a unanimous decision by all EU members. "No changes will be possible without Poland's consent," he said.

In another important gain, Poland will have the right to appoint a permanent advocate-general at the European Court of Justice after their number is increased from eight to 11, Kaczyński said. At present, five of the eight advocate-generals are appointed by the largest EU members, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain, and the remaining three posts are filled by the remaining states on a rotating basis.

Kaczyński also listed what he called other successes achieved by Poland in Lisbon. These include common energy policy measures advocated by Poland, provisions guaranteeing a measure of sovereignty to nation states, and the fact that the EU will not have state symbols, Kaczyński said.

Kaczyński agreed with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that "the institutions introduced by the treaty will take 10 or so years to prove their worth in practice." With the new treaty adopted, the EU should now focus on challenges such as reform of the common agricultural policy, Kaczyński said.