berlin (AFX) - European Union leaders adopted a 50th anniversary declaration Sunday, seeking momentum to end an institutional crisis and replace a rejected constitution with a new treaty by 2009.
The 27 leaders of the bloc gathered in the German capital for a lavish birthday party and lent their support to a manifesto on the values and goals for a union that has shown signs of wear in recent years.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the current EU president, said it is time to plot the way forward after the knock-out blow Dutch and French voters dealt to a draft constitution in referendums in 2005.
'We (Germany) are going to do everything that we can to prepare a roadmap,' charting the way out of the political impasse over the constitution, Merkel told reporters after signing the declaration.
She said such a move could allow Portugal, which takes over the EU's six-month rotating presidency in July, to call a meeting of member states to start drawing up a new treaty by the end of the year with the aim of implementing it before European Parliament elections in 2009.
But before the ink on the declaration was even dry, Polish President Lech Kaczynski said expecting a new EU treaty to be adopted in two years was wishful thinking.
'It is perhaps a beautiful target, but it seems unrealistic to me,' Kaczynski told reporters in Berlin.
He said the 27-member EU might agree the wording of a treaty by 2009 but that it could not come into force before 2011, when Poland takes on the EU's rotating presidency.
The 'Berlin Declaration' was signed by Merkel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, as EU leaders looked on.
After the signing, the heads of state and government posed for a photograph under warm spring sunshine at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of unity just a few steps from where the Berlin Wall once divided Europe.
The word 'constitution' was not mentioned in the document at the request of many of the 27 member states, in particular Britain, the Czech Republic and Poland, which have serious reservations about a constitutional treaty. newsdesk@afxnews.com afp/hjp COPYRIGHT Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News. AFX News and AFX Financial News Logo are registered trademarks of AFX News Limited