EU leaders in Lisbon take part in treaty signing ceremony (1st Lead)

Dec 13, 2007, 12:01 GMT

(L-R) The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, Luis Amado, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Bernard Kouchner, the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Prime Minister of Portugal and EU President, Jose Socrates, and the French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon arrive for the signing ceremony of the Treaty of Lisbon at the Jeronimos Monastery, in Lisbon, Portugal, 13 December 2007. EPA/MIGUEL A. LOPES

Brussels/Lisbon - Prime ministers, heads of state and foreign ministers from the European Union's 27 member states arrived in Lisbon on Thursday to sign a treaty reforming the way their organization functions.

The Lisbon Treaty, formerly known as the Reform Treaty, seeks to simplify and speed up the EU's decision-making process and give the EU more clout on the international stage.

It replaces a Constitutional Treaty ditched by French and Dutch voters in referenda held in 2005.

Under the new treaty, a new EU president, appointed for up to five years, is to replace the current system, in which member states take turns to hold the EU presidency for six months.

It also updates the EU's executive body, the Commission, which draws up EU-level laws and makes sure that they are implemented. At present, every single EU member state nominates a commissioner, but the treaty reduces that number to 18.

'The Treaty of Lisbon will reinforce the Union's capacity to act and the ability to achieve those goals in an effective way. As such, it will help the Union to deliver better results to European citizens,' said EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in a speech at the start of the ceremony.

The treaty, agreed after months of wrangling among EU leaders, is designed to take into account the fact that the 50-year-old bloc has expanded to include 27 countries and a population of nearly 500 million people.

All but two of the new member states that have joined the EU since 2004 were once on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain.

'It is the treaty of an enlarged Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. A Europe that shares common values and common ambitions,' Barroso said.

'For the first time, the countries that were once divided by a totalitarian curtain, are now united in support of a common treaty that they had themselves negotiated,' Barroso said.

EU leaders were greeted under the Portuguese sun outside Lisbon's Jeronimos Monastery by Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates and his foreign minister, Luis Amado.

The officials were putting their signatures to the text inside the monastery, an imposing 16th-century building that homes the tomb of explorer Vasco da Gama and other prominent figures of Portuguese history.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was expected to fly into Lisbon later in the day and put his signature to the document separately due to 'long-standing diary commitments' in parliament.

Brown has been accused of 'cowardice' by opposition parties in Britain for not cancelling his parliamentary engagement.

However, Britain was represented at the ceremony by his foreign secretary, David Miliband, who arrived on time in Lisbon despite his plane being delayed.

The treaty must now be ratified by all 27 member states before it can come into force.

EU leaders are to meet again in Brussels on Friday for a traditional end-of-year summit.