It took nearly a decade of squabbling amongst EU states, a series of referendum disasters and a last-minute game of high-stakes brinksmanship from a stubborn Czech president, but the bloc finally managed to radically refashion the way it worked with the passage of the Lisbon Treaty in 2010.
So exhausted were they by the struggle by the time the soap opera ended, European leaders then swore it would be very long indeed, perhaps a generation, before the EU treaties would be opened again....
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