France's President Nicolas Sarkozy had sought what he called a "simplified treaty". What he got early on Saturday morning was scarcely that, as Luxembourg's veteran premier, Jean-Claude Juncker, pointed out: "The constitutional treaty was an easily understandable treaty. This is a simplified treaty which is very complicated."
Anxious to strip out any hint of pretensions to EU "statehood", the summit abandoned a straightforward document that could be read from beginning to end, for a potpourris of piecemeal amendments. If the treaties governing the EU could not be considered a "constitution" before now, when the new treaty amendments are in place they will certainly not acquire a new constitutional character. But then, as many argued before the leaders laboured so mightily to produce a mouse, there was no qualitative transformation anyway in what the "constitution" would have brought.
It was all about names, symbols, spin. This weekend, as the "constitution" became a "treaty", the "Foreign Minister" became a "High Representative", the French took out one reference to "free and undistorted" competition, but left in 13 others, and the British inserted a "crucial" derogation to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which only applies anyway to actions by the EU itself. To cap it all, the Union lost its flag, anthem and motto. Well, not exactly. . . they simply lost their treaty status. Ode to Joy will continue to resonate on great European occasions.
The EU's motto, "united in diversity", was more observed in the breach - with an outrageous attempt by the Poles to link their voting entitlement to wartime population losses. Prime Minister Kaczynski's implication of political continuity between Hitler and modern democratic Germany is no more valid than an attempt to tar Poland with its communist past. Warsaw won a deferral of the new voting rules to 2014, but its victory, too, is largely symbolic, manufactured for domestic consumption. The key votes on which it has its eye, the EU's next budget round, remain matters for unanimity voting.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern probably summed up the mood of the majority of leaders: "I think the way I left this three years ago was far better. I'm not going to change my mind on that and I think all the changes that we've made are all changes for the worse. But thankfully they haven't changed the substance - 90 per cent of it is still there."
Assuming that the autumn's intergovernmental conference can turn the summit's mandate into acceptable text, Ireland's voters will be faced with a referendum next year on a treaty that finishes the unfinished business of Nice. Little more. Eurosceptics - the Greens in the Cabinet? - will probably revisit the slimming down of the commission, the permanent presidency, the reinforcing of the Union's foreign policy dimension and some new majority voting as evidence of a loss of sovereignty. The arguments for pooling sovereignty in the interests of efficiency deserve, however, to sway the day for this ungainly treaty.