German doubts over the Non-EU Treaty

Der Spiegel explains what Germany did not get, and hints at the greater problems yet to come in a very interesting item linked here.

Part One of the same report, linked here, concentrates on the doubts of others steam-rollered last week, but still apparently falling into line on the march towards total centralized control of their former countries and the former Commission responsibilities,  from which comes this:

The legal departments of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Council, which represents the member states in Brussels, also internally voiced doubts over the construct. At a meeting of the so-called sherpas (the representatives of the participating governments tasked with making preparations for international meetings) on the eve of last week's summit, a heated debate erupted between Merkel's European adviser, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, and the head of the legal department at the European Council.

In the preceding weeks, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy had begged the German chancellor to abandon or at least postpone her plans to amend the European treaties. Instead, Van Rompuy made the case for tightening budgetary oversight with the help of a protocol attached to the Lisbon Treaty, thereby avoiding risky referendums in the individual countries. But Merkel brusquely rejected the idea, permanently damaging the relationship between the two politicians. Van Rompuy said he was "very disappointed" by Merkel, on both a human and political level.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso even spoke of "warlike conditions." According to Barroso, Merkel and Sarkozy are trying to impose their views on everyone else, even though they themselves can hardly agree on any issue. The fact that the majority of countries bowed to the German-French duo in the end shows how dependent the EU is on its two biggest financiers. Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias described the dilemma in a nutshell: "We really ought to engineer a revolution against Merkel and Sarkozy, but each of us needs the two of them for something."

(Emphasis added by Ironies Too blog editor).