European Union:The EU's crisis of confidence sparked by the rejection of the EU constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005 was finally laid to rest this month in Lisbon when Europe's leaders signed the reform treaty, now the Lisbon Treaty.
"This is not a treaty for the past. This is a treaty for the future, a treaty that will make Europe more modern, more efficient and more democratic," said Portuguese prime minister José Sócrates, who spent his country's six-month tenure as EU president holding together a complex compromise on the treaty forged at an EU leaders' summit in June.
The blueprint for the treaty was agreed at a marathon meeting, which saw Poland secure a delay to the introduction of a new voting system that will boost the influence of large countries at the Council of Ministers.
Several other EU states amended aspects of the draft constitution, which is intended to make EU decision-making more efficient and boost its influence abroad. But Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was probably correct when he observed that 90 per cent of the EU constitution was salvaged.
Every EU state bar Ireland intends to ratify the text, shorn of its constitutional trappings, through its parliament to reduce the risk of a new crisis. Hungary was the first state to ratify the treaty, and all eyes now turn to the Republic when in May Irish voters will determine the future shape of the union.
A change of personalities at Europe's top table was critical in jolting the project out of its identity crisis. The election of the dynamic "energiser bunny" French president Nicolas Sarkozy put France back at the centre of Europe after the shock of its failed EU referendum in 2005. During several whirlwind trips to Brussels this year Mr Sarkozy proposed a new Mediterranean Union consisting of European, Middle Eastern and African nations; placing the ECB under political control; a common EU defence policy; and an EU mini-treaty, which looks very similar to the reform treaty.
"Under Chirac there was paralysis and France could not take a proactive role in Europe, whereas Sarkozy has been crucial in unblocking the impasse on the treaty, He has taken a hyperactive approach to European politics," says Antonio Missiroli, director of studies at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC) think tank.
In July Mr Sarkozy also played a cameo role in freeing several Bulgarian nurses held captive in Libya for several years by sending his former wife Cecilia to negotiate directly with Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy. A few weeks earlier he successfully outmanoeuvred liberals by persuading EU leaders to agree to delete a reference to "free and undistorted competition" as a key objective of the EU in the reform treaty.
In marked contrast to Sarkozy's hyperactive approach, Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, has shunned Brussels for fear of enraging a Eurosceptic media already grumbling loudly about the new treaty. Brown, who always gave the impression of hating his trips to EU meetings as chancellor, finally made it to Brussels for the December European Council, although not before creating a diplomatic furore over whether he would attend the signing of the treaty in Lisbon.
"Blair didn't change Britain's national interest in Europe but he found areas where Britain could set the agenda such as economic reform and security," says Hugo Brady, analyst at the London-based think tank Centre for European Reform. "Brown is in danger of giving away this initiative by being oversensitive to Euroscepticism and this could damage Britain's influence in Europe unless he changes his posture."
The other big change at the top was the election of centre-right prime minister Donald Tusk in Poland. He signalled an immediate break with the previous obstructive Polish administration run by Jaroslaw Kaczynski by supporting an EU day against the death penalty and promising an administration based on "common sense".
Warsaw continues to have several difficult European issues that need solving, such as a conflict with Brussels over its road-building programme in the Rospuda valley, but the administration looks capable of avoiding the frequent bitter clashes of the Kaczynski era.
Tusk has also promised to rebuild Warsaw's relationship with Berlin, which was badly damaged at the June European Council. In one notorious remark on Poland's voting rights, Kaczynski suggested the EU should take account of the six million deaths suffered by his country during six years of Nazi occupation in the war. German chancellor Angela Merkel was livid but kept her cool and delivered a deal on the treaty under the German presidency.
The European Commission led by José Manuel Barroso had a quiet, although reasonably successful, 2007. It introduced an energy package, which tapped into public concern over climate change and a more belligerent Russia - Europe's biggest energy supplier. It also embraced consumers by proposing a regulation to cap mobile phone roaming costs. This initiative turned out to be the legislative highlight of a year, when the EU executive focused on cutting red tape rather than proposing new laws.
"The commission is no longer what it was under Jacques Delors. It is less autonomous, often trying to interpret what states want, and consciously avoids irritating capitals," says Missiroli. "It has become more of an enforcer of existing laws and now acts more as a kind of persuader among member states."