After 12 years, hundreds of millions of pounds and epic political toil, the European Union was finally equipped with a gleaming new treaty last night when the Czech Republic ratified the Lisbon accord.

President Klaus, the last Eurosceptic to hold out, put the Union out of its agony with a stroke of his pen, prompting relief from Dublin to Cyprus — but more confusion in the British Tory Party. With complete understatement, Guido Westerwelle, the German Foreign Minister, voiced the weariness. It was, he said, “a good day for Europe”.

This time the leaders hope that they have got it right. With the treaty ratified by all 27 member states, the Union can stop agonising over its machinery and look to long-promised sunny days in which it becomes a force in the world.

The next important decision will be the choice, this month, of the full-time but largely symbolic president and a powerful “foreign minister” with a mandate to give the union muscle beyond its frontier. Ratification will speed up the horse trading, which includes jobs in the new Commission under its President, José Manuel Barroso. Now, any leader of an EU country who is not Tony Blair, a faded early favourite, and who comes from one of the lesser member states, is tipped to be president of the European Council.

However, the long and painful birth of the sleek new bloc suggests that it will not be long before it succumbs to another bout of self-improvement.This one was originally supposed to have taken place in Amsterdam in 1997, but that revamp of the founding 1958 Treaty of Rome fell short of expectation. The next effort, led by President Chirac of France in Nice in 2000, also failed to equip the union for decision-making in its expanded format, and Ireland refused to ratify it.

The French then came up with the grand idea of a constitution and supplied an author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a former president. After four years of negotiation and countless hours of debate with parliamentarians and the people of each country, the constitution was signed in 2004. It was promptly sunk by the French themselves. Dutch voters joined the French in voting “no”. The leaders got the message that at least some of Europe’s citizens felt they were being railroaded by the political classes, and resentment grew in the East.

Lisbon, produced with another two years of talking, stripped the high rhetoric from the constitution but kept its essentials of simplified decisionmaking. Ratification was supposed to be a walkover because awkward voters like the British and French were not being asked for an opinion. Then the Irish voted “no” last year. Chastened by the financial crisis and sweetened by EU reassurances, they approved when asked a second time this autumn.

The long journey from Amsterdam to Lisbon at least means a respite from wrangling over institutions, voting weight and the other internal matters that have beset the Union since 1997. The new version is a loose-boned beast, far removed from the federal animal that was desired by the last generation of enthusiasts, at the time of Maastricht in the early 1990s. Privately in London, Paris and Berlin, the national leaders understand that they still control the show.

The next episode will be an attempt by France and Germany, the two founders of the Union, to reassert the power that they wielded in its earlier days. This is especially the aim of President Sarkozy, who wants to turbo-charge the Franco-German motor that used to drive the smaller Community. The campaign starts on November 11, when Angela Merkel will become the first German Chancellor to attend Armistice Day ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe. Paris then wants a stream of new Franco-German initiatives to breathe life into the Union and get the attention of an Obama Administration, which so far has failed to engage with Europe as a bloc.

But doubts and suspicion still simmer, especially in the East and in Britain. Public uncertainty remains over how deeply integrated the Union should become. There is still unhappiness over decisions and appointments that are made over citizens’ heads.

Mr Klaus would have liked to await the arrival of an anti-Lisbon Conservative government in Britain, but he told David Cameron that he could not delay much longer. The last hurdle was crossed yesterday morning when the Czech constitutional court in Brno ruled that the treaty “as a whole” was compatible with the Czech constitution and Mr Klaus kept his promise to sign the documents.

He appeared to concede defeat last month, telling the daily Lidove Noviny: “The train is already moving so quickly, and it is so far away that it might not be possible to stop or return.” He signed without ceremony and made it plain that he was more interested in his forthcoming trip to the United States for a climate change conference. Mr Klaus has written a book that casts doubt on whether global warming is due to human behaviour.

The ratification was welcomed by Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Prime Minister of Sweden, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency: “The Union has been waiting for this for a long time. It has been a process over many years to get a better functioning Europe with a stronger voice in the world — more democratic, more efficient.”

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