BELGIUM: European Commission president José Manuel Barroso has offered a pessimistic assessment of the future of the EU constitution following its rejection by French and Dutch voters earlier this year.
"In the foreseeable future, we will not have a constitution. That's obvious. I haven't come across any magic formula that would bring it back to life," Mr Barroso said.
"Instead of never-ending debates about institutions, let's work with what we've got. Political will and leadership are more important than institutions," he is quoted as saying by Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.
His comments are the first public acknowledgment from such a senior EU official that reviving the constitution will be extremely difficult.
Officially, the EU is in a "period of reflection" over the document since the no votes by the two founding member states left it reeling before the summer.
At a June summit, EU leaders agreed that the referendum results "did not call into question the validity of continuing with the ratification process".
However, all 25 member states need to ratify the constitution before it can go into place. Due to the uncertainty, Ireland, Denmark and the UK all put their planned referendums on ice.
During his Poland visit, Mr Barroso also noted that continuing with the current Nice Treaty had not led to any major decisions being blocked since enlargement last year.