EU summit: Extension of reflection period makes headlines[fr][de] 

Saying that "there’s nothing wrong with a cheap laugh",  BBC Europe  editor Mark Mardell said that those who had called the EU summit the dullest ever, were proven wrong. After all, there would be some kind of constitutional text or treaty in two years time. Furthermore, the summit was likely to generate controversies. 

The Times believes that “the biggest decision by EU leaders at their Spring summit in Brussels was indecision as they shelved their embattled constitution for at least two years.” The reflection period had not resulted in the break of the constitutional impasse.  

Bernd Riegert from  Deutsche Welle concluded that the constitutional project had been too ambitious. He emphasised that no consensus among EU leaders had emerged. At the same time, he said that the citizens did not really care about the constitution: “For them, it is the result that matters”. 

According to German daily  FAZ the summit showed that the constitutional crisis was bigger than had been admitted.  

Swiss newspaper  NZZ  said that leaders had decided to continue „thinking“ about the constitution for another year, despite the fact that it is “actually dead”. As regards the “absorption capacity”, the debate on its role in future enlargements had, in fact, been postponed to the end of the year. 

Friederike Leibl and Regina Pöll from Austrian newspaper  Die Presse believe that the EU institutions are threatened by chaos, if the constitution does not enter into force before the EP elections in June 2009, which now seems increasingly unlikely.

For French daily Le Monde the debates on the “absorption capacity” of the EU were central. However, there had been no consensus on making it a new criteria for the accession of new countries. Nonetheless, it remained a “condition” for further enlargements.