The European Union’s difficulties in sealing a landmark trade pact with Canada because of opposition from a Belgian region is exposing the bloc’s wider struggle to get things done.
The impasse over the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada is not unique.
The EU is also struggling to finalise a political and trade pact with Ukraine after it was rejected by a Dutch referendum.
Born in the 1950s as a six-country group, the EU has expanded into a 28-member behemoth which for at least 20 years has grappled with, but failed to resolve, the issue of simplifying decision-making procedures.
From the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty to the 2007 Lisbon Treaty, there has been a trend to grant more powers to EU institutions and to allow them to take more decisions by majority vote, limiting national vetoes.
But in recent years, with falling support for further EU integration in most members of the bloc, leaving Brussels in charge has become politically toxic as its institutions are increasingly perceived as aloof and undemocratic.
This has led the EU into a Catch 22 situation.
It is under pressure to involve national parliaments, or voters via referendum, to make its decision-making processes more democratic but that makes it naturally harder to get everybody on board.
In the past, reforming decision-making procedures was linked to the need to accommodate the EU’s growing membership, as the bloc took in former Soviet satellite states in central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now the opposite is the case with EU membership set to shrink for the first time in history, with Britain’s shock Brexit decision.
The remaining EU states are considering options for a multi-speed Europe, in which decisions apply to some, but not all members.
At the latest EU summit, British Prime Minister Theresa May already complained about her country being sidelined by the other 27 EU nations.
According to one diplomatic source, she warned London was unwilling to “rubber-stamp” decisions taken by others.
As far CETA is concerned, the deadlock has arisen after European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker decided in July to sacrifice the tradition that trade matters be negotiated and approved at EU level only.
Caving in to demands from anti-globalisation activists for greater scrutiny over major trade deals, the veteran Luxembourg politician agreed to let CETA be subject to national, as well as EU-level ratification.
In hyper-federalist Belgium, that gave Wallonia, a region of 3.6mn people ruled by a Socialist party at loggerheads with a centre-right national government, veto powers over an agreement concerning more than 500mn EU citizens.
Whether that represents a democratic victory of David v Goliath dimensions, or obstructionism driven by parochial concerns, is open to interpretation.
What is certain is that it leaves beleaguered EU leaders scrambling for yet another last-minute compromise.