Behind the muddied language the dread 'R' word looms

A week before the mid-summer European Council opened I suggested that it would succeed in reaching agreement on a constitutional reform treaty.

It has done so, despite at times making me wonder whether I had made an unjustifiably rash prediction. Mrs Merkel and her team are to be congratulated.

Despite the considerable dreary negotiating talk - of a lack of optimism, of vetoes, of more red lines than the London Underground - it always seemed to me that the pressure for progress w...