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International Herald Tribune

Lisbon Pact Failing to Lift the E.U. on Global Stage

BRUSSELS - Three months after the European Union introduced a new rule book that was supposed to elevate its status on the global stage, an awkward question is unavoidably being asked within the bloc: Has the Lisbon Treaty actually made things worse?

The agreement finally became law in December at the end of an eight-year battle to reform Europe's ramshackle structures and to invest the world's largest trading bloc with equivalent diplomatic weight for its 27 member nations.

But during the treaty's brief life thus far, confusion about the bloc's leadership has deepened, President Barack Obama has decided not to attend a European summit meeting, a series of turf wars has broken out, and there has been criticism of the low profile of the Union's first full-time president, Herman Van Rompuy, and its new foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. Click here for more.