David Cameron, the British prime minister, vetoed a revision of the EU treaties, forcing the rest to seek a separate pact to enforce greater fiscal discipline.
In the end, Mr Cameron neither blocked the compact (25 of the 27 member-states signed a slightly messier version of it outside the EU treaties) nor got his safeguards for the City of London.
The existing EU treaties limit the ability of any group of member countries to push ahead without the others.
And anyway, the existing EU treaties limit the ability of any group of countries to push ahead without the others.
In December, the UK prime minister blocked the idea of changes to EU treaties to bring about closer fiscal integration within the eurozone, saying the move was not in Britain's interests.
In the Lords, peers canter through a couple of bills related to EU treaties and then move onto the Public Service Pensions Bill.
Changes to the EU treaties will surely spark a wide debate about the future of the union.
Even with the EU in charge, tearing up the web of bilateral treaties which entangle Europe's airline industry could take years.
Whether or not all this requires a full-blown and disruptive change to the EU treaties is a matter of anxious debate.
The European Commission wants to prevent the creation of any rival bodies, and wants the treaty brought back into the EU treaties within five years.
The Commission - the EU's executive arm - drafts laws and acts as guardian of the treaties.
But it is the defiance in France's public attitude as much as the deficit in its public accounts which draws the ire of countries, such as the Netherlands and Austria, which tend to respect the EU treaties they sign.
The temporary will now become permanent, requiring a change to the EU treaties, with a new system under which the euro zone can in future restructure the debts of insolvent countries that share the currency.
Indeed, it raised last-minute objections of its own on Monday, insisting on clarification of a clause in the draft negotiating framework that says Ankara may not block the accession of EU states to international organisations and treaties.
The chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the Conservative MP Bill Cash, agreed, arguing that said the government needed to get the UK out of the "mess" created by a number of EU treaties.
But such policies offer a hollow promise of tobacco use reduction, tread on international laws and treaties, and set the EU on a slippery slope towards further restrictions on consumer information.
All of a sudden, though, Berlin is abuzz with talk of remaking the European Union: issuing joint Eurobonds, renegotiating the EU's treaties, even creating a federal Europe.
He is due to meet top EU officials on Tuesday to hammer out details of what changes Budapest is willing to make to the laws to comply with EU treaties.
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EU's founding treaties so that institutions and procedures can cope with the influx of new members.
Amid the debris of broken treaties, wild currency swings and bitter recriminations, Europe's single market could collapse and the EU itself the rock of the continent's post-war stability could start to crumble.
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