Popular intolerance of inward-looking institutional wrangling is growing. The EU’s leaders are not dumb to this. They have been telling anyone who will listen: with the Lisbon Treaty finally ratified Europe-wide, they can finally get back to the serious business of governing. The serious business of governing, however, requires some serious politico-strategic thinking about how to use the Treaty’s institutional blueprint to full effect. The Stockholm Programme, due to set out the political guidelines for home affairs cooperation for the next five years, provides the first major opportunity for the EU’s leaders to articulate a politico-strategic agenda for the EU’s new institutional architecture. But can European governments break the lethargy induced by eight years of institutional uncertainty, the enlargement of the EU to 27 states and successive awards of nul points by many of those publics that have been formally consulted on European affairs?

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