The European Union’s tortuous effort towards agreement on rules to govern its functioning has gotten a bit smoother with its members agreeing on the text of a new treaty to replace its draft constitution.

The draft constitution was rendered obsolete when it was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005. Efforts have been on since then to find text for a treaty acceptable to all members. The Reform Treaty or the Lisbon Treaty, as it is now called, is the result of that effort.

While the treaty retains all the key reforms in the original charter it sidesteps sensitive issues. It drops all references to an EU flag or anthem in a bid to calm fears of nationalists and Euro-sceptics. It provides for a president who will serve for a 2 ½ year term in place of the rotating six-month presidency system in place at present and for a more powerful foreign policy chief.

It cuts the size of the European parliament and provides for a decision-making process that will allow more decisions to be made by majority rule than by a unanimous vote. It allows for considerable transparency in decision-making, far more than do other organisations like NATO or the World Bank, for instance.

With the formal signing of the treaty in December an important milestone in the history of European integration will be reached. But before the treaty can come into effect it will have to be ratified by all members and at least one country – Ireland – and possibly others will put the treaty to vote in a referendum.

It is believed that with memories of referendums on the draft constitution still vivid, most governments would prefer to avoid that difficult road this time. They are therefore more likely to opt for putting the treaty up for parliamentary ratification instead.

The EU has frittered away many years bickering and wrangling over institutional issues. It is time it closed ranks now and moved on to addressing global challenges which individual states, however large or powerful, cannot respond to on their own.

Challenges arising from globalisation and climate change are among a host of issues that the EU could take up without further delay. In the global economic arena, the EU is already a giant player. It could play a more assertive role in world politics as well, by speaking up against rather than acquiescing with American unilateralism on world affairs.