"The constitution requires unanimous consent".

Barroso turned up today to he Conference of Presidents (the governing body) of the European Parliament and said that; and I paraphrase;
"But all member states must have the opportunity to express themselves.
We can, either continue the ratification process, or stop it, or stop the clock, reform and then have a new referendum with a new text.
We have to avoid Euro-masochism: is this (the French Dutch result) all the fault of the institutions? I do not want the Commission to be responsible for all what goes wrong. I want a debate about the responsibility.
Is Europe too liberal? Europe is neither a state, nor market ideology, but there are components of both. We have to come to a consensus, and not to an ideological conflict.
We need a strong Europe towards USA and China, who are laughing at us now".

This meeting was huis clos, and from what i am told "Barroso was very week, scared even today".
He however was in a better mood than Margot - Commisar for Propaganda, who had been dragged over to the meeting in order that she could sitthere and listen for two hours to people like Graham Watson. Her reward? Less than a minute teling people that her communications policy is hamstrung by bureacracy - Welcome to Brussels Margot). I was told that she was "livid, almost too angry to talk".