Big wins from EU summit on Lisbon treaty and climate costs

Reuters was ahead twice during an Oct 29-30 European Union summit — on climate change and the Lisbon reform treaty. The Reuters team was as much as 24 minutes ahead of the competition in reporting that EU leaders had agreed to demands by the Czech president that opened the way to ratification of the Lisbon treaty. Agreement on the treaty, which is intended to give the 27-nation bloc more clout on the world stage, had been predicted in a summit preview days earlier. This same preview story said it would be hard to secure an EU agreement on climate change funding. This also proved correct. After two days of intensive talks Reuters was the first to report British Prime Minister Gordon Brown saying a deal would be secured and we were first to report the deal itself from a Polish delegation source.