Brussels - The head of the European Union's executive on Thursday welcomed Italy's ratification of the stalled Lisbon Treaty as a further sign that the beleaguered document is still alive. In a statement released in Brussels, Jose Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission, congratulated the lower house of Italy's parliament on its vote.
"As a founding country (of the EU), both the Italian government and a broad political spectrum in parliament have shown unwavering support for the European project and the successful ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon," he said.
Member states signed the treaty, which is meant to make the EU's tortuous decision-making process more efficient and give the bloc greater international clout, in Lisbon in December.
Irish voters then rejected the document in a referendum on June 12, meaning that it cannot come into force anywhere in the EU.
But EU leaders meeting in Brussels a week after the vote agreed that other member states should continue to ratify the treaty, in the hope that this would persuade Irish voters to approve it later - a similar procedure to one adopted in 2001 after an Irish referendum rejected the EU's current Nice treaty.
"I welcome that member states have continued to move the ratification process forward so that all member states are heard during the ratification process," Barroso said.
Since the June summit, the parliaments of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Cyprus and Italy have approved the treaty, bringing up to 24 the number of EU states to have backed it.
The treaty is under scrutiny in the German and Czech constitutional courts, with a ruling expected in the autumn.
