Two into one will go, EU presidency says

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In a bizarre twist to the EU's tortuous 50-year history, Portuguese politicians on Tuesday indicated that the Union's 27 leaders would hold two summits on the same day in December - in two different countries.

Portugal currently holds the EU's rotating six-month presidency, and its foreign minister, Luis Amado, told journalists that the recently-approved EU Reform Treaty would be signed by the EU's 27 leaders in Lisbon on December 13.

"The time and place were agreed by the heads of state and government. We see no reason to change anything," he said.

The treaty was created by a convention headed by French former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, approved by EU heads under Irish leadership in Brussels, signed in Rome, torpedoed by voters in France and the Netherlands, revived and revised under a new name in Berlin, and approved for a second time in Lisbon this October.

Portugal's presidency of the EU runs out at the end of the year, and the Portuguese government has been desperate to have the treaty officially signed in Lisbon before then, so that it can go down in history as the "Lisbon treaty." 

But the EU's 27 leaders are already scheduled to hold a regular summit in Brussels on December 13.

Under the EU's current rules, Belgium has the right to host two summits a year. EU diplomats say that Brussels has refused to contemplate any infringement of that right - landing summit organizers with a nasty dilemma.

A proposal to have the treaty signed on the fringes of an EU- Africa summit on December 8 foundered after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would not attend the summit if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe put in an appearance.

The only way out of the impasse therefore seems to be for the EU's leaders to fly to Lisbon in the morning, sign the treaty, and then fly on to Brussels in the afternoon to start their regular summit.

That solution, while inelegant, would certainly be a compromise between the conflicting demands of Lisbon and Brussels.

Whether EU leaders, environmentalists, lobbyists, journalists, airlines, air-traffic controllers, diplomatic delegations, security services and tax-payers will see it the same way remains to be seen.