"I'm not dead yet!", says EU

"Oh, don't be such a baby!" Well, the Eurocrats in Brussels won't give up! BBC NEWS reports that EU heads bid to save constitution. The trouble is, they can't even agree on a budget:

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was important to consider why French and Dutch voters had rejected the constitution, but it was too early to abandon the treaty.

"We don't want to give up the constitution, nor do we want to carry on with business as usual and pretend nothing has happened," he said.

"We have decided to undertake a stock-taking exercise and have a wide-ranging debate amongst all Europeans. We can't, at the moment, forecast the results of that debate."

French President Jacques Chirac has suggested holding an emergency summit to discuss the EU's future.

"In this new situation, can the union continue to expand without us having the institutions capable of making this enlarged union work efficiently?" Mr Chirac said.

But while the deal to push back the deadline for ratification resolves that issue in the short term, the budget remains deeply contentious.

Prime Minister Tony Blair says any reduction to the UK's 4.4bn euro (£3bn) budget rebate must be tied to changes to farm subsidies, of which France is currently the major beneficiary.

But President Chirac has ruled out any concession on these payments, which were pegged until 2013 in a deal accepted by Britain.

Awww. Can't we all just get along?