European leaders yesterday signed the EU's first Constitution, which is designed to give the union a sharper international profile and speed up decision-making in a club now embracing 25 nations.
The treaty was the result of 28 months of sometimes acrimonious debate between the 25 EU governments and now faces ratification in national parliaments.
At least nine EU nations also plan to put it to a referendum, increasing chances that it may not take effect in 2007 as scheduled.
A "no" result in any country would stop the Constitution in its tracks.
The EU leaders signed the document at the Campidoglio, a Michaelangelo-designed complex of buildings on Rome's Capitoline Hill, along with the leaders of Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Croatia -- four candidates for EU membership.
The event was overshadowed by a spat over the makeup of the next EU executive that stems from misgivings about a conservative Italian nominee.
On the margins of the signing, the leaders sought to resolve the dispute over Rocco Buttiglione, the incoming EU justice commissioner, who is opposed by a large segment of the 732-member European Parliament.
The conservative Catholic and papal confidant has raised concerns by saying he believed homosexuality is a sin and that women are better off married and at home.
The Constitution foresees sim-pler voting rules to end decision gridlock in a club that ballooned to 25 members this year and plans to absorb half a dozen more in the years ahead.
It includes new powers for the European Parliament and ends national vetoes in 45 new policy areas -- including judicial and police cooperation, education and economic policy -- but not in foreign and defense policy, social security, taxation or cultural matters.
The constitution was signed in the sala degli Orazi e Curiazi, the same spectacular hall in a Renaissance palazzo where in 1957 six nations -- Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg -- signed the union's founding treaty.
EU leaders signed the Constitution in alphabetical order by country, led by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.
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