When Gordon Brown as UK prime minister signed the Lisbon Treaty in December 2007, he did so in a quiet room with only a handful of other people present.
Among them was Jose Manuel Barroso, who as European Commission president at the time, had helped usher in the new treaty which overhauled the European Union and its institutions.
Barroso said Brown deliberately arrived late to eschew the official signing ceremony and group photo with the other heads of state and government at Lisb...
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.