Opinion: Dog-and-Tony Show: Last week's summit only highlighted the fact that the real work of reform needs to be done at the national level.

Byline: Andrew Moravcsik (Moravcsik is director of the European Union Program at Princeton.)

Forget the debacle that was Europe's constitution. The EU is finally getting back to what it does best: solving concrete problems. Proposals from homeland security to regulatory reform are grinding forward. Negotiations with Turkey are underway. Visionary leadership and grand projects are blessedly absent.

Yet one leader seems not to have gotten the message. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, despite his reputation as an archpragmatist, touted last week's EU summit as a referendum on globalization. Yes, Blair is surely correct that economic reform in the face of globalization is the issue facing Europe today. He may even be right in holding up Britain as an example of how to do it. But he misses the most important point: such reforms--of labor markets, social-welfare systems, pensions and small-business regulation--lie outside the EU's competence. To the contrary, they are the province of national governments, requiring national leadership. And no amount of haranguing from Blair will prod Continental leaders to bite that bullet before they are ready.

To be fair, Blair probably knows that. With 25 members, EU summits have become unwieldy, largely ceremonial events. The three-hour working lunch at Hampton Court, after all, gave each leader only about five minutes to speak, with no time left over to negotiate. Summits ratify agreements reached elsewhere, at most tying up the loose ends. And there were no deals in the pipeline. So why bother with them? Because, as Blair well knows, such gatherings serve another function. They legitimize the EU by focusing public attention and reminding citizens that, in the end, it's their national ...