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Almost two years after adopting ambitious green goals, a year after signing the new Lisbon Treaty and some sixteen months after the first signs of the financial crisis, EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday (11 December) to write a new chapter in the three long-running dossiers.

But it will be his Irish colleague, Prime Minister Brian Cowen to open the show by presenting Dublin's analysis on why the Irish voters rejected the EU's reform treaty in the June referendum and what can be done to rescue its ratification.

Moreover, Dublin could see a pledge to retain the country's commissioner if all other EU leaders follow the French line – all in a bid to enable the Irish government to hold the second referendum by 31 October, according to the draft document. It would mean that one of the key elements of the EU's institutional reform would be changed despite previous pressure on member states not to touch the package when the bloc was turning the former European Constitution into the Lisbon Treaty, following the negative referendums in France and the Netherlands.

The minister was responding to a series of questions from euro-deputies in the constitutional committee on how the Lisbon treaty – which faces a referendum in Ireland on 2 October and final approval in three other countries – should function in practice.

But the deal struck, which allows the ratification process to resume in Ireland, with a view to ratification by the end of 2009, maintains the package of institutional reforms that will allow the EU to be better able to deal with these long-term political problems. So, what was agreed and what does it all mean?

All governments had agreed that the size of the European Commission should be cut down, as successive enlargements of the European Union turned the Commission from a compact executive into a miniature assembly, and several governments were reported as being reluctant to give up on this reform. This is a major coup for the Irish.

In return, the Irish government has committed itself to ratifying the treaty by the end of the term of the current Commission, paving the way for a second referendum on the treaty by October 2009. As far as the composition of the Parliament is concerned, next year's European elections will (if the treaty has not been ratified) elect 736 members. Following ratification, the twelve EU countries due to gain extra seats in the Parliament will obtain them at that point, while Germany will temporarily keep the three extra seats that it would have lost in the event of Lisbon being ratified before the elections. In the absence of a ratified treaty, the six month rotating presidency of the European Council will continue. The Czech presidency will take place, while the following presidency in the second half of 2009 will be responsible for making the arrangements of the new permanent presidency and the proposed External Action Service and Foreign Affairs Council.

My own hunch is that they will try to find a way to enforce the Lisbon treaty without the non-ratifiers. As a first step, they will try to offer the No-sayers a quit-and-rejoin deal. It would be the least divisive option of all, but unfortunately, it may also be one of the least realistic. It would obviously require their consent, which is far from assured. In Ireland’s case it may require a referendum to get out and another one to get back in.If this is not possible, there are several other options involving varying degrees of involuntary separation. For example, everybody would formally remain inside the EU on the basis of the Nice treaty, but the ratifiers would organise their areas of co-operation outside the EU and its institutions – on foreign policy, immigration, economic governance, maybe even on energy and the environment. They could do so using the provisions of Lisbon treaty or any other rules they choose among themselves.

The European Parliament's constitutional committee has given a green light to the new EU Lisbon treaty, suggesting it will make the bloc's rules more democratic and suitable for the future, while remaining "less clear and readable" for its citizens. MEPs in the key parliamentary body dealing with institutional affairs of the 27-strong union gave their political blessing to the document, with 20 votes in favour and 6 against on Wednesday (23 January)

The report argues that the new treaty will make the EU more democratic by boosting the role of European and national parliaments as well as strengthening the citizens' rights through a brand new Charter of Fundamental Rights attached to the document.

The Czech Senate on Wednesday (6 May) approved the EU's Treaty of Lisbon, a move that was greeted with relief in Brussels and that ups the pressure on Ireland, facing its second referendum on the document. Fifty-four of the 79 senators voted in favour of the new institutional rules, which introduce an EU foreign minister, a permanent president of the European Council and widely extend the powers of the European Parliament. The lower house passed the document in February.

For the ratification process to be completed, the treaty still has to be signed by the country's eurosceptic president, Vaclav Klaus. He has previously indicated he would not sign it no matter what the outcome of the parliamentary votes. In a reference to Mr Klaus, the commission president said he hoped the remaining "constitutional requirements" would be completed as quickly as possible.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso yesterday signalled his readiness to maintain his current team as a caretaker executive until 2010, in an effort to keep all countries' commissioners onboard and satisfy one of Ireland's key demands on the Lisbon Treaty.

Barroso's comments came ahead of a two-day European summit this week, at which EU leaders will hear Ireland's proposals to solve the institutional crisis triggered by its rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in a June referendum.

The EU is unlikely to agree concrete solutions to the institutional impasse created by the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty before the end of the year, the bloc's initial discussion on the issue has shown.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted that while there may be no set calendar, as "pressure should not be put on a country, everyone knows that there is a deadline and that is the next European elections."

On Friday, EU leaders are to agree a political statement on the situation expected to say that they respect the outcome of the Irish vote and that time be given to Dublin to find a solution. Whether it will suggest in black and white that ratification should continue is still unclear, due to Czech resistance.

Sweden has set itself ambitious goals for its six-month stint at the EU helm but the upcoming European elections and uncertainty about when the next EU commission will be appointed will make its presidency "quite difficult", the country's minister for European affairs has said.

Sweden is to take over the EU chair from the Czech Republic on 1 July until the end of the year. The period coincides with the end of the mandate of the current European Commission, due in October, and follows the European Parliament elections in June. "Two key players and very important partners of the presidency – the parliament and the commission – will not be fully operational until quite some time into the autumn, which of course complicates matters," Swedish EU minister Cecilia Malmstrom said at a debate organised by Brussels-based think-tank The Centre on Monday (16 March). To the institutional limbo, she said, should be added the economic crisis and the planned second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty, set for October

The EU ship of state has just been holed just above the waterline. While it is unlikely to sink, it could take in water, start listing, and eventually become very difficult to steer.

One of the biggest losers in the wake of the Irish referendum will be the EU's enlargement plans, insofar as they have existed. Pierre Moscovici, one of the leaders of the French opposition Socialist Party and a former Europe Minister, made that point in Paris on June 9. "I think that globally, an Irish 'no' would mean that the European Union would no longer be in a position to pursue further its policy of enlargement," Moscovici said. "For institutional reasons in the first place, because the Treaty of Nice -- I know this, because I was one its negotiators -- is designed for up to 28 [member states]. After that, we'll be in 'no man's land.'" Of the current candidates, only Croatia would be guaranteed entry under existing rules.

The Czech social democrat party is discussing the possibility of suspending president Vaclav Klaus' powers if he does not sign the EU's Lisbon treaty. The temporary suspension would require a simple majority of 41 votes in the country's 81-seat senate and would allow caretaker prime minister Jan Fischer to sign the document instead.

The president's powers could be suspended on grounds that he is unable to discharge his official functions because he is trying to act above the law. "There is nothing in the constitution that gives the president the right to veto decisions of the country's highest institutions. Otherwise we could be considered as some kind of absolutist monarchy," former Constitutional Court judge Vojtech Cepl told newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes on Thursday (25 June).

EU foreign ministers meeting on Saturday (28 March) sought to reassure western Balkan countries on their EU future, but the bloc's heavyweights, France and Germany, reaffirmed their reluctance to accept further enlargement so long as the EU's own institutional future is in limbo. "Clearly there will be no enlargement if there is no Lisbon treaty. Everybody knows it, so why not say it?" French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner was reported as saying by Reuters after the informal foreign ministers meeting in Hluboka Nad Vltavou in the Czech Republic.

But other traditionally pro-enlargement EU states urged the bloc not to shut the door on the EU hopefuls. "I think we have got to make the argument that the European Union should learn from its history and its history is that wider makes stronger," said British foreign secretary David Miliband. Sweden's Carl Bildt expressed a similar opinion.