EU leaders avoid issues at summit

The EU is in crisis, as I discussed in an earlier post. Tony Blair, the British PM and the current president of the EU, is hosting an informal summit for EU leaders today. Unfortunately, Blair has "chickened out" and the most serious issues the EU is facing, the lack of a budget and the moribund Constitution are not on the agenda. Instead, European Union leaders will be discussing the "challenges of globalization." So dull is this topic, that the one-day meeting was cut down from two days of talks. This is a troubling development because it means that European leaders simply are not ready to discuss how to manage Europe's future. With December's summit less than two months away, I find it hard to imagine that they will be able to find sufficient common ground to resolve the budget crisis by then. And everyone seems willing to ignore the Constitution issue for the moment, much to their own peril I think. Hopefully, Blair will find some gravitas by then.