No to Europygmies, yes to Euroblair

“Incomprehensible,” “moderately useless”, “deliberately obscure” – Economist editorials have never been too lavish in their praise for the Lisbon treaty. However, today’s leader signals a new approach to the troubled document approved last week in Ireland. The content of Lisbon, it argues, is not “all bad”. Identifying a number of urgent post ratification tasks, the Economist firstly addresses “Europe’s poor economic performance” arguing the need for liberalising reforms, and downsizing of the state in order to face off China and America, and also preserve the single market – “Europe’s greatest achievement”. However, the European project “has spent too many of its first 50 years looking inwards”. For the après-Lisbon period to work, it must stick with its “most successful foreign policy by far: its own enlargement” and choose “substantial people” for the position of EU president and High Representative on foreign affairs. For the former post, the leader argues, the Union need a figure with clout, and not “the usual Europygmies”. Failure to endorse such a figure as Tony Blair will signal to the world “that it has drifted back to sleep.”