BRUSSELS — Working almost to exhaustion and persuading countries one by one, European leaders agreed Friday to redefine their continent — hoping that by joining their fiscal fortunes, they might stop a crippling debt crisis, save the euro currency and prevent worldwide economic chaos.
Only one country said no: Britain. It will risk isolation while the rest of the continent plots its future.
The coalition came together in a marathon negotiating session among the 27 European Union heads of government — hard bargaining that began with dinner Thursday evening and ended after 4 a.m. Friday, when red-eyed officials appeared before weary journalists to explain their proposed treaty.
It was a major step forward in the long, postwar march toward European integration. It was two decades ago, on Dec. 9 and 10, 1991, that European negotiators drafted a treaty in Maastricht, Netherlands, to unite their politics, create a central bank and, one day, invent a common currency.
The agreement Friday — with all 17 nations that use the euro in favor and nine other EU nations considering it — would force countries to submit their budgets for central review and limit the deficits they can run. Britain is the lone holdout.
“This is the breakthrough to the stability union,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “We are using the crisis as an opportunity for a renewal.”
To prevent excessive deficits, countries in the treaty will have to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which will have the power to send them back for revision. Germany and France insist that fiscal union is the best way to regain market trust, badly shaken by the escalating financial crisis that consumed Greece and spread to Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
Most economists think it will not be enough.
They say the euro countries need to have enough money on hand to guarantee everyone can pay their debts. Euro leaders put off until March a decision on whether to provide money on top of a $668 billion bailout fund for euro countries.
