Back in June, the people of Ireland stunned the world by voting down the Treaty of Lisbon, bringing the project of ever-closer European integration to a screeching halt. The failure of the Irish vote — the only popular referendum on the treaty anywhere in Europe — seemed to ratify the verdict delivered by French and Dutch voters in 2005 as they torpedoed the European Constitution: no more power for Brussels….<\/p>\n
These days, though, such bickering seems like ancient history. Between summer’s turbulence and today’s reality, the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September, sending the world into a financial tailspin from which it might take years to recover. But instead of sounding the death knell for what was an already flailing EU, the financial crisis has had the effect of breathing new life into a bloc that just a couple months ago looked deflated and defeated.<\/p>\n
Now, from Iceland to the Czech Republic, previously wary populations are warming to the EU, heaping praise on the very Brussels-based behemoth they had spent so many years deriding.<\/p>\n