EU leaders making a scapegoat of Brussels - Barroso- by Mark John
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso accused Europe's national leaders on Wednesday of undermining the bloc by breaking pledges to work together and using Brussels as a scapegoat for their own failures.
Barroso urged them to sign a declaration next year that they were genuinely ready to promote EU-wide policies on the economy and security, insisting the EU had to win back its credibility before it could think about salvaging its stalled constitution. But Barroso did not say whether he believed the charter, rejected last year by French and Dutch voters, had any future at all, saying only that he hoped the expanding bloc could manage some kind of reform of its institutions by 2009. "That's why in fact I am challenging national leaders. I am asking them: Are you committed or not to this project of living together in Europe? ... It is good that you say it, that European citizens understand it," he told a news conference.
In an unusually forthright attack on member states by the head of the bloc's Brussels-based executive, Barroso said they had gone back on agreements to reform Europe's economy and boost EU-wide efforts to combat crime and terrorism.
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